The Idea of Progress 9783110820423, 9783110153934

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The Idea of Progress

Philosophie und Wissenschaft Transdisziplinäre Studien Herausgegeben von Carl Friedrich Gethmann Jürgen Mittelstraß in Verbindung mit Dietrich Dörner, Wolfgang Frühwald, Hermann Haken, Jürgen Kocka, Wolf Lepenies, Hubert Markl, Dieter Simon

Band 13

W G DE

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1997

The Idea of Progress Edited by Arnold Burgen Peter McLaughlin Jürgen Mittelstraß

w DE

G Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1997

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability

IJbrary of Congress C^ataloging-in-Publication Data

T h e idea of progress / edited by Jürgen Mittelstrass, Peter McLaughlin, and Arnold Burgen. (Philosophie und Wissenschaft, transdisziplinäre Studien ; Bd. 13) Present v. resulted from discussions at a conference in Gargellen, Austria in Sept. 1994. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-015393-9 1. Civilization - Philosophy. 2. Progress. I. Mittelstrass, Jürgen. II. McLaughlin, Peter, 1 9 5 1 . III. Burgen, Arnold, 1 9 2 2 . IV. Series: Philosophie und Wissenschaft ; Bd. 13. CB19.I34 1996 303.44—dc21

96-37561 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication Data

T h e idea of progress / ed. by Jürgen Mittelstrass ... - Berlin ; N e w York : de Gruyter, 1997 (Philosophie und Wissenschaft ; Bd. 13) ISBN 3-11-015393-9 NK: Mittelstrass, Jürgen [Hrsg.]; G T

© Copyright 1997 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any f o r m or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Typesetting: Converted by Knipp Satz und Bild digital, D o r t m u n d Printing: Ratzlow Druck, Berlin Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin Cover design: Rudolf Hübler, Berlin

The present volume is the result of discussions held at a conference in Gargellen, Austria in September 1994. We wish to express our gratitude to Dr. Heinz Riesenhuber, former Minister of Science and Technology in Germany and to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft for financial support of the conference and of this publication.

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

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IX

G e o r g Henrik von Wright

Progress: Fact and Fiction

1

Walter Burkert

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity Alistair C r o m b i e

Philosophical Commitments and Scientific Progress

19

47

Shigeru N a k a y a m a

Chinese "Cyclic" View of History vs. Japanese "Progress" Jean Blondel

Political Progress: Reality or Illusion?

77

Nicholas Rescher

Progress and the Future

103

Rudolf Flotzinger

Progress and Development in Music History D a g Prawitz

Progress in Philosophy

139

121

65

Vili

Contents

John D . Barrow

Time in the Universe

155

Antonio García-Bellido

Progress in Biological Evolution

175

Gereon Wolters

The Idea of Progress in Evolutionary Biology: Philosophical Considerations 201 Philippe Lazar

The Idea of Progress in Human Health Notes on Contributors Index

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Introduction N o other notion so expresses the self-image and the hopes of the modern age as does the concept of progress. The idea of an unbounded and irrepressible progress has taken the place of the Christian theology of history. The concept of progress, stamped in particular by the Enlightenment, is predicated on the proposition that a free development of the intellect and an enhancement especially of scientific knowledge of nature will more or less automatically lead to an increasingly humane society. Progress is to this extent equated with enlightenment as a historical process. Today, this kind of notion has lost much of its power to convince: both for practical purposes, insofar as progress, including scientific progress, not only solves problems but also creates them - that is, the practical consequences of progress are ambivalent - and also for theoretical reasons. Thus, in recent philosophy of science the concept of progress of knowledge has itself become problematical, in particular with regard to marking out the methodological criteria of scientific knowing and thus of scientific rationality. Philosophy of science considers several models of rationality, all of which expect science to progress; but the explanations and evaluations of progress given by these various approaches are tied to quite differing criteria, including criteria that are external to science. Progress still appears to be constitutive of the activity of scientific research - scientists and philosopher of science are to this extent in agreement - but the concept of progress has lost its former self-evidence and its seeming simplicity. Thus, inde-

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Introduction

pendent of its historical significance, the concept of progress now even more so presents an important theme of philosophical and scientific reflection. The contributions to this volume have been revised and reworked from lectures given at a conference on the "Idea of Progress" organized by the editors and sponsored by the Academia Europaea. At this conference the idea of progress was approached from a number of different perspectives and on a number of different dimensions: the empirical registering of change and the normative evaluation of such change as betterment; the view backwards at the past and forward into the future, that is, the progress we think we have already made and the progress we may still want to make; the study of the general, e.g., of recurrent or cyclical processes, and of the particular, e.g., the unique course of history. The areas considered ranged from physics to musicology, from public health to cultural self-understandings, from what philosophy says about progress to progress in philosophy itself. The diversity of national and disciplinary background of the contributors to this volume produces a number of interesting intersections of disciplines and opinions. Both Blondel in politics and García-Bellido in the organic world pursue the question of whether there can be objective criteria of progress either as efficiency of political structures or complexity of biological organization. Barrow takes up, on the example of time, the problem of registering change itself, since this presupposes some nonchanging background against which the change is measured. Rescher points to the problematic relation between progress in knowledge and accordingly in ability to control the future and the importance of impredictability for a moral and happy life, and Lazar analyzes and illustrates such problems with examples from medicine and from science as applied to medicine. Nakayama points out that there are differences not just between western and eastern cultures in their conceptualizations of change but also among eastern cultures, in particular in their receptions of western science and technology.

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The philosophers von Wright and Rescher seem to agree on the distinction between change and its evaluation but disagree on the evaluation of the change. García-Bellido speaks for and Wolters against the notion of progress in biological evolution - nor do they agree on whether the progress of biology should move us to introduce or to drop the concept of progress in nature. The different roles and differing status of the idea of progress in the course of western history before the modern age, where it has come to be so dominant are put into focus by the contributions of Burkert and Crombie. Flotzinger shows the difficulties involved in using the concept of progress in describing the relation of one age's musicians and music theorists to another's; but also it seems that our reticence in talking about progress, or even more neutrally, about development in the arts is of fairly recent vintage. Prawitz argues that the seeming return of the same (old) problems in philosophy is in reality the return of problems of the same type in a more sophisticated form, and he charts some recent progress in one area of philosophical research, logic. Finally Lazar points out some of the paradoxes of scientific progress in its effects on practical life. The contributions to this volume are offered as food for thought and reflection about the progress of science and society and in particular on the effects of scientific progress on our society. Arnold Burgen Peter McLaughlin Jürgen Mittelstrass

Georg Henrik von Wright

Progress: Fact and Fiction

1. The notion of progress - and its opposite regress - can be defined in a way which is at the same time illuminating and thought-provoking. Progress is change for the better; regress change for the worse. The definitions split the concepts in two components: the notion of change and the notion of goodness. The first is a descriptive or factual idea - change being the transition in time f r o m a state of affairs to a new one. The second is an evaluative idea. Progress thus involves two conceptual ingredients: a factual and an evaluative one. Neither of them is unproblematic, and least of all their conjunction to a whole. The philosophical problems connected with the concept notwithstanding, we are from everyday life familiar with clear and uncontroversial cases of progress as well as regress. We have all witnessed the progress of a normal child, first in learning to walk and speak, later in reading and writing and knowing things. We judge and usually agree about the progress to mastership of a chess-player or a horse-jockey - but also about decline in their mastery of the arts. The warrant of consensus in such judgments about progress and its opposite lies in the fact that there are nearly universally accepted standards of excellence in most of the activities which humans and other living beings learn and practice. There is surely a certain "margin of subjectivity" in the application of the standards - but on the whole it is easy to reach agreement here.

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We are also all familiar with cases when there is a characteristic succession of progress and regress, i.e. when progress reaches a culmination followed by decline and deterioration. Such cases are often spoken of as cycles, their beginning as birth, their culmination as flourishing or thriving, and their end as death. The life-span of a living being - animal or plant - is the prototype example; but also the evolution of artistic styles, the rise and fall of great powers, and the history of entire "cultures" are commonly described in the terms of such cyclic patterns. We shall later have more to say about them. 2. From this cyclic conception of alternating progress and regress must be distinguished what I shall here call the Great Idea of Progress. It is constitutive of a characteristic climate of opinion, also spoken of as "belief in progress" tout court. When doubt is cast on the veracity of the belief, the idea itself can aptly be renamed a Myth of Progress. This idea rests upon a linear conception of time as a directed succession of events, proceeding from a remote past, through the present, to a distant future. The successive stages are links in a chain constituting a history of the world, a Weltgeschichte. It is often said, and probably rightly so, that this historic conception of time was foreign to Greek thinking. Also the very notion of change was difficult for the Greeks to fathom as witnessed by the fact that some of their philosophers flatly denied its possibility, labelling change an illusion. No wonder therefore that the Great Idea of Progress never dawned upon the Ancients. It is no part of our Greco-Roman legacy. Our Judeo-Christian ancestry is different. The Old Testament fixes the initial point of a story. It is the Genesis or Creation of the World. The New Testament looks forward to a future terminal, the Second Coming of Christ "to judge the living and the dead," thereby putting an end to the world and to time. The first full attempt to conceive of the stretch between the two terminal points as a history of the world is due

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to Saint Augustine. He is the first philosopher of history proper. In the Judeo-Christian story, the two terminals have a transcendental, transworldly anchorage. They are the Paradise Lost and Regained. The latter also has another transcendental counterpart known as Gehenna or Hell. In the Judeo-Christian view of world history, the notion of regress dominates. Adam's exit from Eden was a Fall to an inferior state of life. Saint Augustine saw in the six stages through which, on his view, mankind was approaching its destined end, a successive deterioration of the human condition. In this he can be said to echo the tales of Greek mythology about an original golden age which had progressively worsened, first to a silver, then to a copper, and finally to an iron age in which, characteristically, the tellers of the tale thought they were themselves living. The view of history of our spiritual ancestors, both those of Hellas and those of Palestine, is thus markedly pessimistic. In this it differs radically from the optimistic view born with the Renaissance and crystallizing at the time of Enlightenment in the Great Idea of Progress. According to it the road to the future is a progressive, unending improvement of the human condition, in spite of occasional and temporary set-backs. 3. The origin of modern ideas of progress is coincidental with that of modern, empirical, and exact science. Some of the early spokesmen of progress were themselves pioneers of science. The ideological link between science and progress is technology. Francis Bacon and, a little later, Descartes, had expressed the view that the new science would give man the mastery of nature which, in the Biblical tradition, had been promised him by the Lord himself. But the credit for first having articulated the idea that mankind with the new science and improved technology had entered on a road of necessary and unlimited progress belongs to the French scientist Fontenelle in a famous discourse of the year 1683 on the then much debated controversy between les anciens and les modernes. Yet it

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was only more than one hundred years later than the idea was given what may be termed its canonical expression in Condorcet's Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain. "Toute découverte dans les sciences," he wrote, "est un bienfait pour l'humanité." The sentence gives in a nutshell the ethos of the Grand Idea of Progress. Science and technology share two features which are important to my argument here. They are both in a characteristic way accumulative and transcultural. The development of science results in a continuously growing body of knowledge, partly due to the discovery of new facts and partly thanks to their subsumption under theories (laws) of ever growing scope and generality. It is true that this body may undergo occasional diminution because of collective oblivion, and at the level of theories there occur what has become known as paradigm-shifts and related forms of change which mark "kinks" in the linearity of the growth process which nevertheless, in its main features, remains accumulative in nature. What holds true of scientific knowledge also holds of technological inventions and skills. Some may be abandoned or forgotten, but when need arises they can be revived and improved on. The transcultural character of science consists in the fact that scientific knowledge is not the secret of an initiated group of people and that access to it is open to anybody who has the requisite training. In principle, there is no discrimination on religious, ethnic or political grounds against those who wish to acquire for themselves the knowledge and the technical skills based on it. Ideally, science and technology, although in their modern forms essentially of European origin, are therefore common property of all humanity. Attempts to appropriate them for some privileged groups of men or nations are not unknown but have so far been, on the whole, abortive. These two factors: accumulative growth and transcultural diffusion, in combination with the industrial mode of production of commodities, have in the course of the last two centuries given rise to what may be called a scientifico-technological form of civilization. This has radically changed the living

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conditions of men and is, loosened from its European roots, gradually assuming a global character. 4. With time the idea of history lost its anchoring in something over-wordly. History, both in its past and future dimension, became mundane, innerweltlich. The notion of a lost paradise reappeared from time to time in the form of nostalgic dreams of a restoration of ancient ways of life, thought more in accord with man's "natural" condition than the artificialities of an increasingly technified civilization. But on the whole modern sentiments were future oriented. They were looking forward, not to a promised land beyond the grave, but to one to be approached through progress on earth, thought warranted by the growth of science and the gains of technology. The idea of progress which had its final breakthrough during the Enlightenment can rightly be regarded as a secularized heir to the Christian salvation story. But those who proclaimed the new gospel were, it seems, forgetful of the fact that the Christian world history had had two transcendental terminations: one in Heaven, another in Hell. They prophesied a heaven brought down on earth. But were they perhaps at the same time conjuring up the horrors of Gehenna to earthly existence? The evidence provided by history in our century surely does not point univocally in direction to the one rather than the other ultimate destination. 5. The cumulative growth of science - both on the level of facts and on that of theories - can itself be regarded as progress. The same is true of the transcultural diffusion of scientific knowledge and of technology. Some philosophers have held that knowledge is a value in itself and that therefore more knowledge ipso facto better than less knowledge. The thought is not easy to grasp and must be made more precise. Knowledge requires a knower, a subject who knows. N o single person can know every truth which science has put on record. The subject of the bulk of scientific knowledge must be construed impersonally. One sometimes

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speaks of science itself as such an impersonal knower. On another locution, mankind is said to have or possess this knowledge. If scientific knowledge is a good or value per se, growth of knowledge means progress, enhancement of value. By this standard one can speak of periods of slower and more rapid progress in science, and of times of stagnation or even regress. One can also rate various contributions to science as greater or inferior. No one doubts that such assessments and comparative ratings of scientific progress make good sense, even if it sometimes is difficult to reach full agreement on them. Progress in science thus has its own internal standards of excellence. It was not, however, this kind of valuation, which Fontenelle or after him the French encyclopedists made when praising science as the vehicle of progress. It was not progress in science which they had in mind, but scientific and technological progress as enhancing values external to science. The goodness of scientific knowledge is instrumental, i.e. value for a purpose or end other than science itself. So we must ask: Which is this end science is supposed to promote and in the promotion of which true progress is thought to consist? Although Francis Bacon cannot be said to have entertained what here I call the Great Idea of Progress, he said many things which are relevant to the question just raised. Particularly in The New Atlantis, Bacon eloquently describes the blessings which the uses of scientific discoveries will bring to man - in medicine and weaponry, commerce and transportation, nutrition and homely comfort. One could sum up his list be saying that science through its technological applications will make life easier and more enjoyable, men happier and better satisfied with their lot. This kind of change for the better I shall call hedonic progress. Bacon, unlike some later dreamers and optimists thought of it as a possibility and promise rather than a necessary and linear road to the future. Least of all did he associate it with ideas of social and political reform. An alternative to the hedonistic view of progress is the thought that true progress consists in the moral perfection of

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man. This moralist view of man's "progress from rude, to civilized manners" had early protagonists in Scottish enlightenment. Condorcet expressly linked it to the effects which the advancement of science will have on the human condition at the societal level. He envisaged a day, when the perfection of manners and morals had resulted in a world-civilization and the sun will shine only on free men "ne reconnaissant d'autre maître que leur raison." It is perhaps significant that also the optimists of progress of the 19th century - from Auguste Comte to Herbert Spencer although they professed the enhancement through science both of the hedonic and the moral aspect of life did not distinguish the two clearly from one another. They seemed to take it for granted that when life becomes easier it will also become more civilized and humane. This, surely, is a proposition on which grave doubts have been cast in the century which is now approaching its end. 6. We have distinguished three different kinds of progress. One is progress in science and technology. Another is the improvement of the material well-being of individuals and societies. A third is moral perfection. The Great Idea of Progress was the thought that the first type of progress has an instrumental role in promoting the other two types - the accumulative and linear nature of the first being a warrant of life becoming progressively easier and manners more civilized. Ends are objects of desire and as such valuable to the subjects who pursue them. The value of the ends - whether hedonic or moral - must be distinguished from the instrumental value of the means used for attaining them. Yet there is a tendency to confuse them. The improvements of the means - for example their becoming cheaper or easier or less timeconsuming to use - tends to become itself an end and valued independently of those ends for which the means were originally invented. I shall speak of this as a transfer of value from ends to means. The transfer may result in neglect of the original ends because of our enthusiasm for improving the means.

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Perhaps the best examples of this phenomenon of valuetransfer are provided by electronic technologies of communication and information. The technologies in question help us to conquer the resistance which space and time present to a variety of end-directed activities. The temporal dimension is reduced to what is misleadingly called "real time" but should better be termed "null-time," since it means the virtual elimination of the temporal dimension. In a similar manner, television and radio overcome spatial separation. Events from the most distant corners of the world: warfare, natural disasters, the staging of political meetings and demonstrations, become present to our eyes and ears without we having to leave the chair in which we are seated. This conquest of space and time cannot fail to disturb the rhythm and increase the speed of life in ways which may be straining us beyond the limits of our biological endowments for taking in and reacting to messages from the external world. This will make us frustrated, restless, and tired. Improving the means to some important ends thus becomes a secondary end the pursuit of which may be counterproductive in relation to other, maybe even more valued ends and vital needs of a good life. This transfer of value from originally cherished ends to continuously perfected means for their attainment has had noteworthy repercussions on modern ideas of progress. The perfection of the means is technological progress, and this in turn normally results from progress in science. The criteria of perfection are internal to the means themselves and external to whatever ends the means may serve. With this transfer of value our very idea of progress tends to reduce to identity with the undeniable and impressive progress which we have witnessed and continue to witness in science and technology. The risk is that we lose sight of the other aspects of progress which were in origin involved in the idea that the man of science and technology had embarked on a road of necessary and unending betterment of the conditions under which he has to live.

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7. Has belief in steady progress been confirmed by historical experience during the two or three centuries since it was first proclaimed and then gradually came to stamp the climate of opinion - to begin with in the Western world, but with time also in large sectors outside the Western orbit? When discussing the question, it is important to keep apart the hedonic and the moral aspect of progress. It is an undeniable fact that scientific technology has made the burden of life progressively easier for broad segments of the population in the countries we call "industrialized." A person who like me has lived through the major part of this century cannot fail to be impressed and also astonished by the changes he has witnessed. The advancements in medicine and nutrition, the improvements of housing and sanitary conditions, access to commodities which earlier either did not exist or were accessible only to a privileged few, immensely widened opportunities to enjoy the treasures of art and higher culture through travel and media network - all these things bear witness to what progress in science and technology has done to enhance the well-being of millions of men. Have these developments not amply justified belief in progress? One must, however, not forget that there also is a reverse side of the coin. The scientific and technological developments which are responsible for progress in the living conditions of men are also responsible for an enormous load on the physical environment and on the material resources of the earth, threatening the first with irreparable damage and the second with exhaustion. Only recently have these threats assumed alarming proportions, conjuring up apocalyptic visions not unlike those entertained in ancient myths about a universal conflagration or end of the world. The implications for belief in progress are twofold: First, it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether the blissful effects of technology can be permanently extended beyond the confines of the industrialized countries to the vast and rapidly growing majority of people who do not yet share them but enviously long for them. If their longing is bound to be

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frustrated in the end - which seems to me anything but unlikely - then the Great Idea of Progress has surely turned out an illusion, at least as far as its universality is concerned. Secondly, also the circle of the blessed is exposed to dangers of frustration. The easing of life fosters an increased appetite for more and more of the goods provided by technological advance. This has adverse psychological effects in the form of greed and envy and narcissistic individualism. It also works for a new stratification of society in rich and poor, successful and dropouts. This threatens social stability in the industrialized world. Increased material wellbeing does not warrant satisfaction either with prevailing conditions or with the prospects for the future. With this observation we touch on the moral aspects of progress. One need not entertain any fanciful ideas about the moral superiority of men in the good old times when religion and tradition still held the conduct of people in a firm grip, in order to realize that in the moral sphere there is nothing corresponding to the obvious progress in hedonic conditions brought about by advance in technology and science. Nor need one think of secularized man as necessarily a depraved creature. But it is probably right to say that science-based technology has provided us with means for the perpetration of evil and suffering on a vaster scale and with a more systematic thoroughness than ever before in history. The horrors of two World Wars and the ravagings of the political creeds of communism and fascism as well as of latterday fundamentalism testify to this. It is ironic, and perhaps also ominous, that many of these horrors were inflicted in the name of an enlightened and progressive utopia. The defunct Soviet Union showed us the Great Idea of Progress in a fool's mirror. Is there any guarantee that Western liberal democracy and market economy will not in the end provide us with another? 8. One must beware of a too hasty verdict on the truth or falsity of belief in progress in the light of historical evidence. Admittedly, the present balance of good and bad things looks

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rather unfavourable. The idea of continuous progress has lost much of the fascination it had for earlier generations. But the balance may become reversed and more hopeful times again dawn upon mankind. What it will ultimately be can never be determined on the basis of the testimony of history. History, as we understand it, is an openended process. What will happen, for good or for bad, will always remain a matter of conjecture and contingency. This is noteworthy because it means that the truth of the Great Idea of Progress is ultimately a matter of faith - like the Christian notion of salvation through trust in God. To vest one's hopes in an earthly rather than in a heavenly paradise does not make their fulfilment a verifiable or falsifiable fact. Science and technology will progress. This is a tautological consequence of their cumulative nature - provided mankind survives. But the hedonic and moral condition of man will always be open to regress as well as progress. These obvious truths notwithstanding, attempts have been made to underpin belief in progress with technological arguments. Examples are Adam Smith's notion of "the invisible hand" or Hegel's related though more speculative idea of "the cunning of reason" (List der Vernunft). Their purpose can be said to have been to argue that apparent set-backs to progress have an inherent self-correcting tendency which promotes a favourable balance of progress over regress in the longer run. The ideas of Smith and Hegel can be seen as mundane heirs to Leibniz's tbéodicée and related attempts to reconcile the existence of evil with the goodness of a transcendent ruler of the world. We cannot here discuss these ideas further - nor the theoretical support to belief in progress which Darwinian ideas of evolution were thought to afford by some philosophers in the sunlit era preceding the First World War. Kant was a firm believer in progress through increased enlightenment. But he was realist enough not to try to support his view by arguments of pure reason. Like belief in God and in immortality, belief in progress was for Kant a postulate of practical reason. As such a postulate it is more like an urge to

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work, quand même., for the improvement of the human condition than a hopeful prediction of future achievement. A variant but also a vulgarization of Kant's idea lingers on in present-day thinking. It is often coupled with an admission of the difficulties caused by environmental disaster and dwindling resources, by the gulf between rich and poor nations, and by psychologically conditioned grievances and restlessness also under affluent conditions. The remedy for these evils is then seen in furthering scientific research and technological development, in the evolution of various "anti-technologies" to counteract the damage caused by industrialization and wasteful consumerism, and in helping the underprivileged to obtain the amenities which the privileged of our scientifictechnical civilization already enjoy in full measure. It is my personal conviction that this is a foolish view to take under present circumstances. The Great Idea of Progress is a fiction. It originated from the self-understanding of a period in European history which labelled itself Enlightenment and took pride in the emancipation of man from the tutelage of any other authority but Reason. The self-understanding held out a promise of linear and continuous amelioration of the human condition. This was the Myth of Progress. It gave a future oriented telos which guided much of European and Western endeavour for some two centuries, thereby profoundly changing the course of the world's history. But it took us finally to a station where its role as guide to the promised land has become increasingly doubtful and continued clinging to it has become foolish blindness. The self-understanding which gave birth to the myth now threatens to become self-deception. Therefore time has come to reject the myth. Hegel, the most ambiguous and challenging of philosophers in the Western tradition, spoke of the Owl of Minerva which begins its flight at dusk. Only when day is over, can one pass a rightful judgment on the work done during it. One is then called upon to reconsider one's potentialities and limitations and to correct one's self-understanding in the light of one's

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achievements and their often unintended consequences rather than in the light of one's aspirations and hopes. I think we have arrived at a station when something has come to an end and when reconsideration of our destiny is imperative. Spiritually, we are in a period of what I propose to call reflective dusk. Before us is the impenetrable darkness of night. It may still last long to the dawn when a new orientation in the world can be clearly articulated. 9. The Great Idea of Progress, we have said, implies a linear view of the historic process. It is, moreover, characteristically "futuristic." It is an idea loaded with expectations - in contrast to the backward-looking linear view, also occasionally entertained in modern times, which is loaded with nostalgia. There probably is no civilization in history the temper of which has been so strongly forward-oriented and optimistic as Western civilization after the Renaissance. This fact about it is reflected in the important role which (social) planning has played in it and which is an accompaniment of the role which democratic ideas have had in the development of the political systems of government. Planning presupposes faith in the powers of the human mind to foresee the future and rationally steer our road into it. To foresee the future may be relatively easy in times of stability and slow change. N o t least thanks to the rapid technological developments in the second half of the present century, the future has become more and more unperspicuous and therefore less and less predictable. The belief that science could help us in an increasingly complex predictive endeavour is reflected in the origin and rise to prominence of a science of futurology or future studies. I cannot help myself finding the phenomenon intellectually worrying rather than hopeful. I see it as symptomatic of a need of reassessing our present which one mistakenly thinks can be satisfied by anticipating our future. Reassessing and reconsidering one's situation is a reflective activity which by its very nature has to be oriented towards

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the past rather than towards the future. The present is then viewed as an endstation, arrived at when certain hopes have been consummated, certain possibilities developed to their extreme, and the satisfaction which developing them initially brought is giving place to a feeling of disappointment, doubt, and tiredness. Such a view of our present issues from a cyclic rather than linear understanding of our past as a process which has taken us full circle back to a state resembling the one where we were when the process started. It goes without saying that the resemblance can only be one by remote analogy. N o r need the point of comparison in the past be uniquely fixed. We may locate it either in the outgoing days of the Roman empire; or in the early centuries of reshuffling in Europe by, on the one hand, Christianity and, on the other hand, the Völkerwanderungen·, or in the times of the High Middle Ages, the period of "privatization" of social functions in feudalism and the "internationalization" of higher culture through the Church. I shall not pursue these analogies here. I only mention as a charateristic of the intellectual atmosphere of our times the revived interest in the Middle Ages as a source of inspiration for the historical understanding of the transformations which are now taking place in Europe. An understanding of our present in cyclic perspectives of our past is, on my view, much more profitable and called for than seeing it in the future oriented perspective of increased well-being (economic growth) or allegedly more civilized manners. This change of the perspective by no means invalidates the traditional view of progress in science - although even it may need some modification. 10. In historic reflections on art, cyclic schémas play a prominent role. This is a difference between art history and science history. The idea of linear progress simply does not apply in the esthetic domain. But it is symptomatic of how deeply ingrained this idea is with us moderns that one sometimes hears people wonder at the fact that "already the ancient Greeks," or

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classic Chinese, or the various branches of medieval Islamic culture produced such marvels of unsurpassed beauty as was the case. As if it were natural to think of Michelangelo as improving on Phidias, or of Shakespeare's insight into the human passions as a further deepening of that of Euripides. The cycles in art-history are what we call styles - in architecture, painting, music, poetry or drama. An artistic style has a relatively fixed origin in time, often due to a technical, semiscientific discovery of improved or entirely new means of artistic expression - such as the gothic vault or the central perspective or the pianoforte. Richly endowed creative talents then develop the style through a period when it is said to flourish or reach a peak, after which it stiffens to epigonery and mannerism, decays and finally passes away - not infrequently because some rival style has begun its life-cycle and won the acclaim of the public. Later on, a style can regain the favours of good taste, as long despised gothic buildings did in the 19th century. A style may revive in imitations - but only seldom, if ever, can one speak of its revivival as progress or further development of its once inherent potentialities. 11. It seems to me that cycles of artistic style afford the best examples of the type of historic perspective needed for a reconsidered and deepened understanding of the present situation. This presupposes that the cyclic view is applied to quite different and much greater units of historic development than those which art-historians study. What is required are alternatives to the Weltgeschichte of linear chronology. Such alternatives are in fact known, not only from ancient but also from relatively modern historiography and philosophy of history. The Italian Gianbattista Vico was a pioneer of the cyclic point of view in understanding historic phenomena. It is symptomatic that in recent times there has been a strong revival of interest in Vico and Viconian studies. In the 19th century the Russian slavofil writer N.J. Danilevsky under the influence of Darwinian ideas about the evolution of species, distinguished high-cultures or civilizations

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with analogous life-spans from birth and infancy to maturity and flourishing followed by decline and death. These are the great units of history. The most recent one, Western culture, Danilevsky thought was dying. It was going to be succeeded by one born in the plains of Russia. This last thought was not alien to Spengler either, who, with Arnold Toynbee, is the great reviver in this century of the view of history as cycles of successive high-cultures. Like Danilevsky, Spengler thought of the cultures as organisms with individual lives of their own. The analogy is obvious, but when pressed can easily be misleading. A useful corrective to the view of cultures as organisms is to compare them to the styles in which artistic creativity has manifested itself. The style of a culture is constituted by the slowly changing beliefs, customs, and valuations which in the form of tradition are handed down from generation to generation and distinguish the cultures from each other. When traditions slacken their hold on the mores, a culture looses its self-identity, becomes styleless, fades out. Just as in the arts there occurs imitation of styles of long separated periods, similarly a culture sometimes attempts to revive ideas, elements of a life-style, from another culture without being rightfully said to continue it. Thus in spite of at least two grand attempts to revive Greek humanist ideals and standards of taste, Western culture is as little a continuation of the Greco-Roman one as is neogothic college-architecture a continuation of medieval building. Yet comparisons between us and the Ancients can be most instructive and useful. Not least may this be the case in a situation like the present one when there are reasons for thinking that our culture too has run its circle to end and people are in search of a new beginning. Regarding the great cultures as relatively closed and selfcontained units of history will also help us realize the selfcentredness of beliefs in the superiority of the scientific and technological style of life which has come to stamp Western civilization in its late days. It will make us appreciate the rela-

Progress: Fact and Fiction

17

tivity of the values once embodied in the Great Idea of Progress. The new wisdom, if we acquire it, will make us more humble and respectful, not only in our attitude to other cultures, but also to that which is the common frame of all cultures, viz. nature, the Mother Gaia which nourishes us materially. The idea of man as lord and commander of nature has become a curse on us. Getting rid of the curse requires deepgoing revision of current values and priorities. 12. Against my plea for a cyclic view of civilizations, including our own, I can imagine a cry of protest to which we must still briefly listen: The time when there existed self-contained cultures is over. Such cultures were separated from one another both in space and in time. Also when they were roughly contemporaneous, it took the enterprizing spirit of a Marco Polo or Columbus to bridge the gap which separated them geographically. But this separation is overcome by modern technology. The technological conquest of space and time does not by itself mean that the world has become culturally one. But, as already noted, (pp. 3-4), the life-style of industrial and technological societies is rapidly extending over the globe, far beyond the confines of what once was distinctly Western, not to say European, culture. Will this process of "modernization," as it is also called, eventually result in the world-civilization, which Condorcet envisaged? In it the legacies of local cultures - in some cases relicts of earlier high-cultures - would linger on and constitute cultural "colour-patches" within a uniform framework. The frame would continue to be knit by industry, science, and technology which progressively loose their roots in Western cultural traditions. A leading role in their future development will probably be played by actors of neither European nor American origin, but of Oriental or, maybe, Islamic. It is sheer conceit and prejudice to think that only Westerners are inherently capable of developing the rational endowments of which science and technology are the outflow.

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Let us assume that this will be the future. As long as development continues, those responsible for it are likely to stay captivated by the idea of progress - and the passive participants will go on paying lipservice to it as long as they can hope that their hedonic circumstances of life will be improved. I do not find this state of affairs at all improbable. It is only a futuristic extension of prevailing tendencies and trends. But what I think most improbable is that it could continue for long. The chances are that Mother Gaia will simply refuse to carry further the burden of growing industrial production and accumulating waste, ruining the environment and exhausting natural resources. The presentment of approaching disaster will make people restless, increase social grievances, and provoke escalated violence - more like the tribal wars we are now witnessing in various corners of the world, including Europe, than like the two global power conflicts which will perhaps remain uniquely characteristic of our century. In the turmoils, earlier achievements of this civilization may gradually get lost - not only those relating to people's comfort but also the more delicate values of human rights, democratic forms of government, and "civilized manners" generally. If growing chaos leads to gradual fragmentation and disintegration of the fabric of civilization, might it then not also happen that there will, with time, be one or several new starts from which another high-culture with its peculiar life-style will evolve? Perhaps it will at a later stage, under the impact of its potentialities and achievements, foster a new belief in everlasting progress for man. It must only be hoped that the peoples of this culture will not let themselves be snared and strangled by the lures of this revived myth.

Walter Burkert

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

Ever since the modern idea of progress was formulated and brought to resonance by Auguste Comte in 1836, the question has been raised whether this idea too can be traced to ancient roots, as is usually done in the history of ideas, or else to Judeo-Christian origins secularized in the modern approach. Progressus itself is a Latin word, used, among others, by Cicero, and there are Greek words in the background: epidosis and prokopé. But not only is the use of these words relatively late in Greek - epidosis plays some role in the 4th century, 1 prokopé in the Hellenistic epoch 2 - they are not prominent, they are just catchwords of an epoch. As in the second half of the last century, with Nietzsche, Burckhardt, and Erwin Rohde, the tendencies and voices of pessimism and antirationalism in ancient Greek literature and thought became more noticeable and more appealing, the idea of progress was found to vanish from the ancient world. That the ancients were ignorant of the the idea of progress was the thesis of a book of J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, in 1920. Others contradicted, especially Ludwig Edelstein in an unfinished book which appeared posthumously in 1967, with the programmatic

1 2

See below at n. 34; 42; 46; Edelstein 92, 79. It commonly refers to personal 'progress' in philosophy, as in Plutarch's treatise ' H o w one may note one's own progress towards virtue', De profectu in virtute·, see Stählin s.v. prokopé in: Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament VI (Stuttgart 1959) 703-719.

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title, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity.3 It gave rise to a thoughtful reexamination by E.R. Dodds in 1969; Dodds' title, "The ancient concept of progress," was also chosen as the title of Dodds' own Scripta Minora which appeared in 1973. There has been some further discussion since, without too much altering of the scenery, as far as I can see. Resuming the status quaestionis, I shall consider three stages in the evolution of Greek thought, first, the traditions of myth and ritual, secondly, the so-called Presocratics, esp. the sophists of the 5th century, and thirdly, Aristotle in the middle of the 4th century B.C. I shall add some reflections on the ancient arguments for 'cycles' versus linear progress of time, and finally some remarks on later antiquity and the new stance taken by Christian writers. First, myth: We have been taught by Claude Lévi-Strauss that there is an awareness of the contrast of culture versus nature even in civilizations that have been called 'primitive' or 'Naturvölker' by moderns. This awareness easily develops into tales which make the opposition a sequence of dramatic peripeties, contrasting an original, uncivilized state with the institution of culture as it is 'now', with its order, distinctions, and limitations. There may be large scale catastrophes to make the change, such as the deluge, or the intervention of strange ambivalent helpers ranking from gods to animals, 'tricksters' or 'cultural heroes', and there is the installation of religion. At any rate, the conditions of present human life are not found 'natural' but wrought by change as against contrasting alternatives, dependent upon intentional creation, invention, foundation, a form of kosmos constructed from chaos, distinctions against mixture, limits against the boundless, not without the risk of falling back to the state from which it sprang. Motifs of this kind occur in Greek myth in multiple variants. It is true that many of the texts are relatively late, but their original, 'primitive' character is not seldom confirmed by

3

The earlier discussion is resumed by Edelstein xi-xxiv.

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connections with ritual, and by oriental parallels, too. One main 'cultural hero' for the Greeks is Heracles:4 Heracles, through his 'labours', made the world accessible and habitable, by exploring far-away lands, by killing monsters and transferring the mastership of animals to man; this includes the foundation of sacrifice. Especially in Western colonization Greeks propagated the reassuring myth that Heracles had been there before, as far as the pillars of Hercules and beyond, missing neither Sicily nor Rome. But note that even the well-known myth of Odysseus and the one-eyed Cyclops5 may be seen as a cultural myth. As the cannibalistic master of animals on his paradisiac island is blinded, the mastership of animals is transferred to man, distinguished by intelligence and language, and sacrifice is installed. Odysseus sacrifices the ram that has saved his life. This is culture. Heracles, for one, is also said to have worked on the landscape, to have dug riverbeds, built dams, split the mountains in Thessaly or even at Gibraltar. In a similar way, but by distinct tradition the Thessalians celebrated what they called their 'giants' Festival', Peloria, alleging that Thessaly had once been a lake. When the Tempe valley was opened up and the lake all of a sudden disappeared, people took possession of the land, civilization had its start, but the festival recalls what was before.6 What we find in myths of this type is not progress in the sense of continuous development, but still reflection on civilization marked by alternatives, with the awareness of a break from what was before. Wild animals and monsters, uncultivated land or even inundation, and the positive stress on culture achieved, with dominance of territory and animals, and with religion present in sacrifice.

4

5 6

See W. Burkert, "Eracle e gli altri eroi culturali del Vicino Oriente," in: C. Bonnet, C. Jourdain-Annequin, ed., Héraclès d'une rive à l'autre de la Méditerranée, Bruxelles 1992, 111-127. Odyssey 9, 177-555. Baton von Sinope, Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 268 F 5; Meuli 1041 f.; Caduff 246-249.

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There is a related set of Greek myths which too reflects on 'uncivilized' antecedents of present 'civilization', but makes the gods, the 'givers of good things,' the very protagonists. It is Demeter in particular, the corn goddess, who brought grain to Eleusis - Schiller adapted this tradition in his poem Das Eleusinische Fest - and Dionysus who taught man how to produce wine. But other achievements, too, are inventions of gods,7 the taming of the horse,8 the construction of the chariot,9 metalwork, and even the making of cheese.10 The consequence is, once again, a persistent cult of the gods, not without fear that the gods might withdraw their gifts if offended. There are festivals to recall the previous stage and the progress due to divine intervention. There may be initiation rituals to reconstruct the transition from 'wild' to cultivated life, from a pastoral stage or even from cannibalism and 'werewolves'.11 A concept of 'tame' or 'cultivated' life (hémeros) goes together with 'cultivated' plants, grain and vine; in fact these have been selected and genetically altered through millennia of Neolithic cultivation, and need constant tending. One might be tempted to say that the 'Neolithic revolution' survives enshrined in the traditions of ritual and myth. In general these strike an optimistic note. "I escaped from evil, I found the better," this is recited at Athens on the occasion of marriage by a child crowned with thistles and acorns, carrying a basket with bread.12 Old and bad life, thistles and acorns, are left behind thanks to Demeter's gifts. It is a relief to conform to civilization's exigencies - this is the lesson taught, acceptance of society as it is now; it could be worse, and myths are ready to tell that it was worse in the beginning. Civilization

7

8 9 10 11 12

Cf. in general Plat. Polit. 274d, Phil. 16c. For details of the mythical and quasi-mythical traditions, see Kleingünther. Attributed to Athena, Pindar Ol. 13,65 f. Attributed to Athena, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 12-15. Taught by the nymphs to Aristaios, Diodorus 4,81,2. For the Arkadian 'werewolves', see Burkert 1983, 84-93. Pausanias Atticista e 87; Zenobios 3,98 (Paroemiographi Graeci I 82).

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means rescue from monsters, from helplessness, from starvation. Life of men is contrasted in particular to animals, the condition humaine is established between animals and gods. Within the great family of cultural myths, the interest of mythologists has mainly concentrated on one particular specimen, Prometheus and the origin of fire. It is our anthropological perspective that makes the management of fire one of the distinctive steps in the process of hominization. The myth of Prometheus the Titanic trickster is told twice in Hesiod. 13 It is less naive than the groups of myths just mentioned, because it implies a double perspective and a double change, towards the better and towards the worse. That man cannot do without fire must always have been clear, but this myth makes the acquisition of fire a theft, punished by the superior god, and it goes on to describe the disastrous consequences through its sequel, the creation of woman, the Pandora story. Thus two main institutions of civilized life are discredited, sacrifice and marriage. Sacrifice is deceit, because men burn the inedible parts of the victim for the gods and eat the rest themselves, and marriage is economic ruin for man who still cannot do without a woman. In addition, Pandora's barrel of evils and diseases has been opened once and for all. Thus, gain is counterbalanced by loss, instead of the 'positive' versions in myth and ritual which proclaim acceptance of the present state as installed with the help of gods, Prometheus indicates the problems of human culture, the cost of change, the ambivalence of gods. The Aeschylean drama from the 5th century, Prometheus Bound,14 goes on to escalate the conflict of men and 13

14

Hesiod, Theogony 535-616; Ergo. 42-105. Suffice it to refer to West 1966, 305-336; 1978, 155-172; Burkert 1985, 171; J. Duchemin, Prométhée. Histoire du mythe de ses origines orientales à ses incarnations modernes, Paris 1974. Parallels are collected by J.G. Frazer, Apollodorus. The Library II, London 1921, 326-350. An alternative, undramatic version of the invention of making fire by Hermes: Homeric Hymn to Hermes 108-111. There is endless debate whether this really is a w o r k of Aeschylus (died 456 B.C.); see most recently R. Bees, Lur Datierung des Prometheus Desmotes, Stuttgart 1993, w h o arrives at a date of about 420 B.C.

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gods: Zeus wished to destroy mankind, but they survive through Prometheus' inventions, technology. This seems to be a quasi-modern reversal of the optimistic teachings of myth and ritual; it is still very old, as it is developed to the extreme in one of the earliest Babylonian epics, Atrahasis, from the beginning of the second millennium. 15 The supreme god wishes to destroy mankind, yet Atrahasis, 'outstanding by cleverness,' with the help of Ea, the philanthropic god of wisdom, builds his ship and survives the deluge. It is through technology that mankind survives, nay, has in fact become indestructible - this is the somewhat cynical message of this text. There is, finally, that most famous myth of decadence in Hesiod, the myth of the Golden Age and of mankind's degeneration step by step, the gold, silver, bronze, and iron age, marking the 'progress' from worse to worse. This is in fact a singular text, most probably of non-Greek origin; the extent to which it reflects the 'end of the Bronze Age' as we see it remains an intriguing speculation. 16 Hesiod, for one, found it necessary to interpolate the age of heroes or 'half-gods' in the metal sequence, to account for the Greek heroic tradition. Forefathers are exemplary in patriarchal society, the aim and duty of the descendants is 'not to be inferior to them,' to avoid decadence, which nevertheless seems to happen. There always were reasons to doubt whether mankind was living in the best of possible worlds. There are many other myths that dwell on paradisiac utopias, somewhere else and far away, remember the myth of paradise lost in Genesis 2/3. The myth of the ages is memorable by its systematic structure, taking the decreasing value of the four known and scarce metals to mark the se-

15

16

See W.G. Lambert, A.R. Millard, Atra-hasis. The Babylonian Story of the Flood, O x f o r d 1969. Suffice it to refer to B. Gatz, Weltalter, Goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte Vorstellungen, Hildesheim 1967; West 1978, 172-204; W. Burkert, "Apokalyptik im frühen Griechentum: Impulse und Transformationen," in: D. Hellholm, ed., Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East, Tübingen 1983, 235-254.

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

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quence of devaluation in an unforgettable way. The myth has retained its particular fascination far beyond the ancient world. To sum up, there are dissonant reflections and elaborations on the achievements and problems of human civilization, there is no unanimity even at the stage of myth. As to the second, the 'Presocratic' stage, one may well speak of an intellectual revolution in Greece during the 5th century, even if it remains difficult to describe and to explain this adequately. This was a period of fundamental political, economic, and social change, with the invention of isonomia, later called demokratia, the unexpected but glorious outcome of the Persian wars, the economic boom concentrating on the new center, Athens, the growing chances for individual careers. The limitations of the Greek world made themselves felt again at the close of the 5th century, with the Persians regaining control in the East and the Carthaginians destroying Greek Sicily in the West. The intellectual foundations had already been laid in the 6th century. In the background there was real progress in crafts and arts which can clearly be seen, e.g., in large-scale temple building, in tunnels for water-supply, in bronze casting, in red-figure vase painting. N o doubt "crafts have made progress (iepidedókasin), and in comparison with the contemporary artists the old ones are not worth much," as a later Platonic text puts it.17 In emerging prose literature we find a new and exceptional trust in individual knowledge and cognition, with writers starting to write 'on the universe' and eager to contradict current beliefs of 'the Greeks' or of 'men' tout court·, they discover 'nature' (physis) as an independent, autonomous yet understandable complex of processes, encompassing human life. Somewhat later there arises the thesis that individual life can be decisively changed and modeled through education, in contrast to inherited social roles and replication of patriarchal authority. This is the impact of the so-called sophists who

17

Plato, Hippias maior 281d.

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promise to 'make better' by teaching anyone willing to embark on study. This concept of 'making better' though applies more to individual progress than to society as a whole; still, projects for ideal 'cities' begin to arise. With the hope of 'getting better', the intellectual power of the individuum replaces older forms of 'bestness', arete, and makes the authority of the fathers questionable. We find the word 'old' (archaion) assuming a negative connotation: What is 'old' is outdated, it can be turned to ridicule, just as were the long locks and hairpins of the 6th century kuroi. Zeus, as a new god, has overthrown Kronos. There is new poetry, new music,18 as well as new forms of speech and argument. Many felt the shock of modernization; antagonism and conflict were bound to arise. Some would proclaim that the 'new' outlook meant immorality and decline as against the 'old' state. The most vivid picture of the situation is presented in Aristophanes' Clouds, produced 423 B.C. Thucydides, in a speech purportedly held in 432, has the Corinthians contrast old Sparta and modern Athens: The Spartan way of life, the Corinthians say, is 'old-fashioned' {archaiotropa). "Necessarily, as in crafts, whatever comes latest will prevail. For a city in a state of rest, immovable customs and laws are best, but for those who are forced to react to many different situations, manifold improvement and new invention are needed" - Thucydides coins the word epitéchnesis, which one might even translate by 'upgrading'. "Therefore the ways of the Athenians are much more modernized, on account of manifold experience" - 'modernized', kekainotai, is another new creation of Thucydides. 19 This is his way of expressing the concept of 'progress' or 'modernization' which was happening in 5th century Athens. Thucydides is ready to acclaim this change, even if the ascent of power politics and economic competition was to result in the great war. 18

19

Timotheos Fr. 21 ed. Page; Timotheos, Persai 219-33; cf. [Arist.] Met. 993bl5; contrast Plutarch, De musica 1135c and pass. Thucydides 1,71,2 f.; cf. de Romilly.

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The triumph of achievement marks a scientific text from the first decennia of the 4th century B.C., the Hippocratic writing O n ancient Medicine'. "Medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method, through which the discoveries, which are many and excellent, have been made, during a long period of time, and the rest will be discovered, if somebody competent and with knowledge of the discoveries already made will conduct research, starting from these."20 It was 'necessity' (ananke), the text says, that originally prompted research, there has been gradual progress, much has been achieved by now, and further progress is foreseen: The science of medicine will be "complete" in a not too distant future, through further research. Thus in the special field of this 'art', the idea of progress doubtless exists, even without a characteristic term. It was in the context of the 5th century that a general and consistent theory about the progress of civilization originated, the so-called 'Kulturentstehungslehre'. 21 Unfortunately scholars remain entangled in philological problems. We have a set of texts the historical-philological interrelation of which cannot be established with certainty. The main documents are the famous choral ode of Sophocles' Antigone, polla ta deina, dated to 441 B.C., 22 and Plato's Protagoras,23 It is possible that Protagoras the sophist, who was active after about 450 B.C., was

20

21

22

23

Hippocrates, De vetere medicina 2,19; the date of the text - between ca. 400 and ca. 350 - is controversial. See Uxkull-Gyllenband; Spoerri; Cole; Karl Reinhardts hypothesis that Democritus was the ultimate source of Diodrus 1,8 and hence the decisive theorist, accepted by Kranz in D K 68 Β 5, has to be given up. The only real piece of evidence for Democritus is D K 68 Β 144, see at n. 41. Sophocles, Antigone 332-375. Some motifs are resumed in Euripides, Supplices 196-215, about 422 B.C. Probably the form of myth chosen in Plato's Protagoras 320c-323a is Plato's verdict on Protagoras' theory: A just-so-story.

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the original source, with a book "On the state of things in the beginning." 24 The theory starts with the difference of man versus animals with regard to 'survival': By natural endowment, humans are inferior to many well specialized animals. Man needs clothing and houses, and weapons to fight ferocious animals. Hence practical necessity (chreia) forced man to make pertinent inventions, gradually and in a long and tentative process, yet with evident success: Man has become dominant, he managed to subdue the animals, to work the earth, to navigate at sea. Still this is not sufficient. There is no less cogent need for social collaboration; it is language which makes this possible, together with social rules, with forms of 'justice' that result in the establishment of 'cities'. The city, polis, is the normal form of human habitat in the Greek perspective. Hence the pride of human demotes, as voiced in Sophocles' Antigone. The word deinos means 'terrible' by etymology, but has developed to mean 'impressive' or 'admirable'. Sophocles plays on this ambivalence: "Nothing is more terrible/admirable than man." Here we find a functional analysis of society in the disguise of reconstructed cultural history. It is presented practically without factual basis, but for the defective endowment of 'natural' man; arguments are drawn from putative 'needs'. Gods have disappeared from the picture. Already Xenophanes, towards the end of the 6th century, had criticized myth: "It is not true that gods have shown everything to mortals in the beginning, but in the course of time, through search, they find out what is better."25 'Search' and 'findings' through a long stretch of 'time'. If not the word, the idea of progress is prefig-

24

25

This title, Peri tes en archei katatstaseos, DK 80 Β 8b = Diogenes Laertius 9,55, is discredited by the suspicion that it might be constructed from Plato's famous dialogue; still archen kai katastastn biou recurs in the same context of 'Kulturentstehung' in Moschion, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 97 F 6, but not in Plato. Xenophanes D K 21 Β 18; see J.H. Lesher, Xenophanes of Colophon, Fragments, Toronto 1992; Edelstein 3-19.

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ured here. The fifth century theory accepts the idea of a long and gradual process. In fact it was Archelaos, a pupil of Anaxagoras, who made the transition from cosmological to cultural anthropology: He introduced the famous opposition of nomos versus physis, cultural decision-making versus biology;26 the process of physis, as described by the so-called Presocratics ever since Anaximander was found insufficient to explain man's existence. The further elaboration, the triumphant accent on 'man', superior through inventions and learning, may be due to Protagoras. "Nothing is greater than man." 27 Anthropology on these lines was handed on by literary tradition until the end of the Hellenistic epoch and beyond. We have remarkable elaborations in Lucretius' poem, On Nature, and in the first book of the world history by Diodorus. In Lucretius we finally meet the very term 'progress': Everything has been taught, little by little, through "the experience of restless mind, who makes progress step by step" (mentis pedetemptim progredientis. 5,1452 f.). If myths and rituals seemed to reflect the 'Neolithic Revolution', the subsequent historical epoch, the 'Urban Revolution', is integrated in the Protagorean system. We may still note curious omissions or blind spots in this theory of progress. The invention of writing which, in our view, makes the distinction of 'high culture' is hardly discussed - Plato has a nostalgic myth instead 28 - nor is the invention of money given prominence - although this had been mentioned in Xenophanes. 29 Money rather recurs in moralizing poetry and popular philosophy as a permanent danger to virtue. The ancients kept discussing society in its political and moral, not in its economic dimensions. As far as we see, there are no projections or

26 27

28 29

D K 60 A 4 = Hippolytos, Re fut. 1,9,6; cf. Heinimann. Sophocles, Antigone 332. 'Man' is a concept resounding f r o m Protagors' famous sentence 'man the measure', though this belongs in the context of a theory of knowledge, D K 80 Β 1. Plato, Phaedrus 274c-275b. D K 21 Β 4.

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promises about the future. Man is reminded and summoned to live his own present life consciously. When we finally come to the great philosophical writers of the 4th century, it is clear that Plato is 'reactionary'. There are other anti-progressive trends in his epoch, the most radical personified by Diogenes the Dog, the proverbial father of cynicism. This meant denial of culture in order to find back to some 'natural' life of absolute personal independence. The followers of Diogenes were to form a weird contrast to the ongoing spread of urban luxuries for many centuries. Plato, for one, is prone to find degeneration all around, even if he knows and to some extent accepts the current theory about the gradual evolution of culture from 'animal-like' beginnings to fully developed cities. He still proclaims that the 'ancients' were closer to the gods.30 Most impressive is the myth developed in the dialogue Politikos. There are two phases in the lapse of time, two contrasting movements in the world.31 As long as god is directing the world, there is evolution towards the better, culminating in a situation of paradise, but as god has left the steering-oar long ago, a process of debasement and disintegration has been going on since, until god will resume his rule at a certain time. Of course Plato knows Hesiod's myth of the ages, and repeatedly refers to it. It is different in Aristotle: As one basic concept in his philosophy is 'nature' (physis) in the sense of a leading principle that inaugurates 'movement' from 'privation' towards an 'end', from 'possibility' to 'what has its end in itself', entelecheia, Aristotle has a special sense for 'evolution', first of all in the physical world, including biology. But he does not hesitate to apply this perspective to the field of cultural achievements too, especially in his brief account of the development of tragedy: Tragedy started from 'natural' and humble beginnings, the joy of imitation which led to improvisations, it went through

30 31

Plato Philebus 16 c; cf. Cratylus 398a; Laws 713a. Plato, Politicus 269c ff.; cf. also Laws 679e ff.

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many changes, as poets "brought forward what became visible of its forms," until finally evolution came to a stop, "because it had attained its very nature."32 There is evolution towards a state of excellence all over in the design of nature; the goal is the end, telos. Aristotle deals with the history and perspectives of culture more fully in some of his early works which have been lost; characteristic fragments survive.33 There are pertinent remarks also in the preserved treatises. Culture, for Aristotle, is a continuous process of learning: "In a relay race, as it were, those who are now renowned have taken over achievements from many predecessors, who on their part had worked progress, and thus they have made progress themselves." Here we get the term epididonai.14 It is not even difficult, Aristotle says, to improve on existing discoveries. "It appears to be in the reach of everybody to move further on and to improve on what is well done in outline; in such matters, time is the discoverer, or else a good helper. In such a way the progress in crafts has happened, it is in the reach of everyone to add what is still »35

missing. Following the established paradigm, Aristotle takes an evolutionary view of human society as a whole. It is best, he writes in his Politics, "to look how things are growing from

32 33

34 35

esche ten heautes physin, Poetics 1449al5. The problems of the reconstruction of Protreptikos and Peri philosophias cannot be discussed here; see I. Düring, Aristotle's Protrepticus. An Attempt at Reconstruction, Göteborg 1961. - Some pupils of Aristotle further engaged in cultural history, such as Dikaiarchos, who wrote a book 'The Life of Greece,' dwelling on steps of civilization, from hunters through pastoral life to the agricultural stage - a construct which has had great success down to the 20th century. He still could incorporate the traditon of the 'Golden Age' through reinterpretation of Hesiod. Theophrastus wrote on the beginnings of piety and sacrifice, in a nostalgic rather than a progressive mood, in his book Peri eusebeias. Aristotle, Soph. El. 183b29. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1098a23-26.

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their beginning."36 Society developed from family and 'house' through village to city {polis); this is the perfect and final state.37 Aristotle is far from idealizing the beginnings: "The earliest human beings, whether they were earth-born or the survivors of some cataclysm, were in all probability similar to ordinary or even to foolish people of today."38 Even philosophy, when it was 'young', spoke inarticulately like a child.39 There is progress after all. In detail, Aristotle distiguishes three steps in the development of civilization; being steps in intelligence, each of them may be called a form of 'philosophy' which thus had been with man all the time. There was first "practical need which taught the necessary things; when these things were present, then what relates to beauty and luxury would thrive." 40 Already Democritus had confronted the 'necessary' techniques, the basic crafts, with art created in a state of 'superabundance'.41 This was an addition to the Protagorean model, which had proceeded from 'need' and thus found two sectors, technology and politics, to be determinants of cultural life. Now it appears that culture is more than 'need', it includes those playful and colourful elaborations which we appreciate so much. Note that Greek has just one word for both, techne. Quote from one of the lost writings: "After the destruction and the deluge, people were first compelled to do philosophy (i.e.: to use their intelligence) in relation to food and living; when they had become richer, they developed the arts for pleasure, such as music and her like; when they had achieved superabundance beyond necessity, they started to do philosophy (in the full sense). But by now there has been so much progress, starting

36 37 38

39 40 41

Aristotle, Politics 1252a24. ib. 1252a26-1253a9. ib. 1269a4; hence "it would therefore be an absurdity to adhere to their notions". Aristotle, Metaphysics 993al5 f. For the following see Edelstein 72 f. Aristotle, Politics 1329b27-31. Democritus, D K 68 Β 144. See also [Plato] Epinomis 975d.

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33

from small beginnings, in the shortest of time, in research concerning geometry, logic, and other subjects of education, as in none of the other crafts. And still all people used to recommend the other (practical) arts, paying honour to them and offering money to those who practice these, whereas those who practice science and philosophy we do not encourage, often we even prevent them; but still they make greatest progress (epididosi), because by nature they are the most fundamental {pre s by tata)."42 "Further, all people now like to dwell on these, and wish to take up their study, leaving aside other things, once they have touched a little bit of the advantage they get from them." 43 Philosophy has been making tremendous progress, Aristotle states, progress which is both necessary and 'natural', and it is reaching its final state: "Since in few years great progress (accessio) has been achieved, philosophy will be finished and perfect within a short time." 44 Aristotle seems to have written this when he was still young, in the Fifties of the 4th century. He has in view not only the success of Plato's Academy but especially the progress of mathematics and mathematical physics linked to the name of Eudoxus.45 "There was great progress (epidosis) of mathematics at that time," we read in a text which comes from the circle of Plato, "as Eudoxus and his like changed the archaic ways (archaismos)" of older geometricians.46 Once again we meet with the word 'archaic' in its pejo-

42

43 44

45

46

Aristotle Fr. 53 Rose = Protrepticus Fr. 8 Ross = Iamblichos, De communi mathematica scientia p. 83,7-21, and Proklos, Commentary in Euclid p. 28,13-17. Proklos ib. p.28,17-20 and Iamblichus, Protrepticus p.40,20-22. This is Cicero's resumé of the same passage, Tusculanae 3,79 = Aristotle, Fr. 53 Rose = Protrepticus Fr. 8 Ross. Cf. Aristotle, Politics 264a3: "Almost everything has been discovered already". See F. Lasserre, Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos, Berlin 1966; J. Mittelstrass, Die Rettung der Phänomene, Berlin 1962. Philodemus, Academicorum Index col.Y, see T. Dorandi, ed., Filodemo, Storia dei Filosofi. Platone e l'Academia, Naples 1991, p.126 f.; W.Burkert, Platon in Nahaufnahme. Ein Buch aus Herculaneum, Stuttgart 1993, 26-33.

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rative connotation, in contrast to contemporary achievement. Eudoxus made decisive contributions to theoretical geometry and can be said to have founded mathematical physics in the field of astronomy, with his theory of 'homocentric spheres'; he seems to have convinced the aging Plato of the mathematical perfection of the kosmos, and he provided the basis for Aristotle's world system and theology as set out in Metaphysics book eleven. It was the commentaries to Aristotle's Metaphysics that have preserved some knowledge of Eudoxus' system, which in the field of science had rapidly been superseded by Hellenistic astronomy. To sum up: With Aristotle we find the idea of progress with the appropriate terms, epidosis, accessio, within a comprehensive and consistent theory of the evolution of mankind through various steps, with the successive elaboration of technology, of arts, and of philosophy and science which should merge into one. What is in focus is the progress of human civilization at the level of intellectual consciousness. This is not unlimited, Aristotles thought, but close to its end: there is perfection. This statement proved to be preposterous. In spite of Aristotle, and even in Aristotle, progress is not the main message of ancient civilization. A main counterforce to check the idea of constant progress was the preference for the 'cyclic' understanding of time. Even Aristotle dwells on this, as he associates time and the movement of the heavens;47 he was following Platonic and Pythagorean tradition. The idea of 'cyclic' time has often been treated as a mythical idea, or as an apriori-form of pre-modern or anti-modern 'Weltanschauung'. Thus it regained its force with Nietzsche and his message of eternal return, ewige Wiederkehr. Mircea Eliade made the same catchword, the myth of the eternal return, a central concept of religion. 48 It is undeniable that many forms of religion lead to an experience of a 'cycle' through festivals which fol47 48

Aristotle, Physics 223b21-224a2. M. Eliade, Le mythe de l'éternel retour, Paris 1949/The Myth of the Eternal Return, Princeton 1954.

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

35

low the circles of the year and the moon, and interpret the course of human life as a 'circle' from birth to death. A new dimension is added with the idea of reincarnation, which came to Greece probably from India, at the time of Pythagoras; it makes individual life repeatable over and over again. Its evident emblem is the 'cycle' or 'wheel' of rebirth, an expression found both in Greece and in India. 49 Astronomical speculation added a 'great year' as the comprehensive cycle within which all the astronomical phenomena should repeat themselves, and possibly everything else too. The Greeks attributed this idea to 'Chaldaeans', but also to Pythagoras and Heraclitus; 50 we find it established with Plato and Aristotle. The great year-speculation goes together with the idea of twofold destructions that should happen on earth, through fire and through water, at the cosmic summer and the cosmic winter in turn. 51 Still one should not take these ideas as due to some 'primitive' heritage, as a pre-modern 'concept of time' from which mind was to emancipate itself in the course of progress. N o r should we overlook that to experience and to count time in its linear sequence is absolutely normal and no less old. People were wont to remember lines of ancestors, long before philosophy and science made their impact, and the hope of families was that this would go on and on; lists of kings or victors or eponyms were recorded since the beginnings of writing. We should rather understand the idea of 'cyclic' time as a rational, nay logical postulate. It seemed to be the only way to combine stability and change, to account for stability in whatever is happening, and hence for sense. As Socrates says in Plato's Phaedo: "If things would not reciprocate ( a n t a p o d i donai), one to the other, going around as it were in a circle, but if coming-to-be were on a straight line ( e u t h e i a ) , going from one state to the opposite, and did not bend back to the other 49 50 51

Cf. Burkert 1972, 120-136. Cf. Burkert 1972, 314 f. Plato, Timaeus 39d; reduced to local change, without destruction of the universe, in Aristotle, Meteorologica 352a25-352bl7e.

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Walter Burkert

side, and did not make turns, then ultimately, you know, everything would end up in the same state, would suffer the same fate, and thus would stop coming-to-be... In the end, by necessity, everything would be dead, and nothing would be alive."52 This is the final and inevitable result of linear progress: nihilism, the big black hole, when the short history of time has come to an end - as modern physicists might put it. Plato repeats the principle of the 'cycle' in his Republic: "For everything that arises there is destruction ... when the turning around of the cycles makes the curves meet;"53 what remains is the cycle. Plato is by no means the first to think on such lines. In Greek philosophy it had been Empedocles, above all, who proclaimed the 'cycle' as the very form of stability, nay of eternity, a cycle of antagonistic forces which dramatic peripeties,54 which still cannot annihilate what exists forever. "Insofar one is used to arise from many, and conversely many come out from one, disintegrating, things come-to-be and their life is not stable; but in so far they do not at all stop changing through and through, they are forever, beings unmoved/immovable in a circle."55 Plato went on to transfer the idea of the cycle to the movements of civilization, to and fro, oscillating in periods either under the god's guidance or left to itself. The evolution of mankind, as taught in the fifth century model, becomes an incident that must have happened repeatedly. This is reinforced by Aristotle: not only the world is eternal, uncreated and indestructible, but all the species brought forth by 'nature', all the plants and animals, including the human race: They have been there forever, it is only the form of civilization that may be destroyed repeatedly by catastrophes, to recover again through the same steps. Hence if there has been progress until now, it dates from the last cataclysm; if the triumph of philos52 53 54 55

Plato, Phaedo 72bc. Plato, Republic 546a. These can be described in the form of a combat myth, D K 31 Β 30. akinetoi kata kyklon, Empedocles D K 31 Β 17,9-13 = Β 26, 6-12.

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

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ophy is experienced 'now', this is just one felicitous phase in the greater circle. "It is natural that every craft and philosophy has been invented repeatedly, and has been destroyed again." 56 There has been and there will be again catastrophic change (;metabole), but "the universe remains stable." 57 Even the Stoics, if they postulated a destruction of the kosmos by fire (iekpyrosis), would equally postulate a new kosmos to arise, and since there can only be one 'best' form, the future world will exactly correspond to the one which exists now: "Periodic rebirth of the whole," as Marcus Aurelius (11,1,3) puts it. For the alternative of infinite progress, I find just one early voice, Anaxagoras. For Anaxagoras, the cosmos grows through movement from an original state of total mixture towards ever greater distinctness, ruled by 'Mind', Nous. "And Nous has taken command of the whole of the cyclic movement, so that it began to move around in the beginning; and at first it began to move around from a small center, it moves around now at a larger scale, and it will move around at a still larger scale."58 The powers of Nous are infinite, Nous is capable of 'knowing' the whole of the future, it is steadily progressing. Anaxagoras also postulates the existence of the infinitely small, which leaves infinite possibilities for 'becoming' without ever assuming that this happens from 'nothing'; everything has been there before, but keeps evolving. This seems to be also the area from which the theory about the progress of humanity from humble and confused beginnings through 'need' and 'necessity' sprang with Archelaos and Protagoras, Anaxagoras' younger contemporaries. But others immediately arose to point out the logical pitfalls and fallacies of the concept of 'infinity', of the infinitely small - Achilles never reaching the tortoise - as well as of the infinitely big. Ever since

56

57 58

Aristotle, Metaphysics 1074b 10-12; cf. Politics 1329b26: " O n e must assume that inventions have been made often in the long course of time, or rather infinitely often"; see also De cáelo 270bl9. Aristotle, Meteorologica 352bl7 f. Anaxagoras, D K 59 Β 12.

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then philosophers have tried to ban infinity from their constructs. This meant the end of the idea of infinite progress too. What remained was the cycle as the only form of permanence. It means to get rid of fear together with hope, those two "biggest tyrants of human life." 59 If we add a survey of antiquity after Aristotle - which means to scan rapidly about one millennium, assuming the Langobards and Arabs to have put an end to antiquity - there are contradicting observations to be made. O n the one hand, there is unquestionable progress, progress in science, progress in technology, and, most markedly, progress in the organization of mass society. O n the other hand, the awareness of these manifestations of progress is limited or even lacking in the intellectual circles of rhetoric and philosophy. It failed to catch the media. Philosophers had built up the authoritative image of their own founding fathers, while rhetoricians kept rehearsing the Persian wars. It is true there was constant imperial propaganda about 'this felicitous reign', and 'our' wonderful 'saeculum. , b 0 But this was personalized, each emperor being acclaimed afresh as the saviour of the world who was bringing back the Golden Age; this was to lose its force through repetition and to confirm the impression: It's all the same. What we miss in the whole of ancient theoretical thought is any analysis of economics, including economic progress. The development of Mediterranean trade had been decisive for the advent of ancient civilization, and there was remarkable economic growth from the time of Augustus onwards, followed by decline from the end of the 2nd century but not lacking periods of precarious recovery. In the end, however, the empire proved to be an economic failure: Many were quite happy with the Moslem takeover.

59

The expression is Lucían's, Alexander Pseudomantis 8, echoed by Goethe in Faust / / : "Zwei der größten Menschenfeinde, Furcht und Hoffnung, angekettet..."

60

The famous expression nec nostri saeculi est occurs in Trajan's letter to Pliny on the Christians, Pliny, Epistulae 10,97.

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

39

We must still acknowledge the enormous progress in organization of civilized life that was due to the Roman empire ever since Augustus; this cannot be described here. Just imagine if there were peace and legal security from the limits of Iraq to Marocco and from Britain to Egypt even today. Jurisprudence as a science developed from the practice of Roman law. The Corpus iuris was published in 533. To pick out a few of the most remarkable instances of scientific and technological progress after Aristotle. In astronomy there was the heliocentric system to come with Aristarchus, about 270 B.C., the discovery of the precession of equinoxes with Hipparchos, about one century later, and finally the 'Great Syntaxis' of Ptolemy which was to dominate the next 1400 years. In medicine, there was the discovery of the nerves by Herophilos in the first half of the 3rd century B.C. - a physiological phenomenon which failed to find its proper name; neuron/nervus was the traditional designation of the sinews. In geography, there was the exact measurement of the earth's perimeter by Eratosthenes, before 200 B.C., with the division of the earth's surface through meridians and parallel circles. In mathematics, Euclid's Elements, about 300 B.C., was just a start, followed by Archimedes, Apollonius, and others, with conic sections, trigonometry, and integrals, to give just a few keywords. Archimedes was conscious of the progress achieved, and spoke of the well-founded hopes for further progress.61 As to technology, public interest concentrated on the machines of warfare - primitive as the 'catapults' may appear to moderns; it was in this context that the very word machine, machina, entered the Latin world in its West Greek form machana, even before Archimedes' role in the siege of Syracuse, 212 B.C. More important, but hardly noticed was the invention of the screw. Archimedes theorized about helices·, the earliest technical application, the water-screw - still cur-

61

Archimedes, Ephodos, prooemium,

II 430,15-18 ed. Heiberg.

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Walter Burkert

rently used in our sewage systems - is linked to his name. By the 1st century B.C. the screw was applied to winepresses, and gears using screws became common. The simple screw to fix components together is found by about the first century A.D. 62 it never appears in literature. I shall come back to water-wheels and water-mills. A decisive invention that superseded Greek architecture and Greek style was the fabrication of mortar and various kinds of cement. In consequence, the final triumph of architecture became the cuppola, instead of the Greek temple. "Salomo, I outdid you," Justinian is said to have proclaimed when the Hagia Sophia had been completed in A.D. 537; this was some 400 years after the Hadrianic Pantheon had been constructed in Rome. In between there were the huge Thermae and Basilicae, not to forget the temple of Venus and Roma at Rome. 63 Later sacred architecture both in the Christian and in the Moslem world had its model in the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia, not in the Parthenon. There is still one document I wish to adduce, an epigram on the invention of the water mill. It is by Antipater of Thessalonica, from the time of Augustus: Keep your hand from the mill, corn-grinding females, and take a long sleep, even if the voice of the cocks proclaims morning. Demeter (the grain-goddess) has ordered the nymphs (the water-goddesses) to take over the toil of manual work: They jump down at the highest part of the wheel and turn the axle around; and the axle, in turn, through winding spikes makes the hollow weight of the millstones from Nisyra revolve. We enjoy again the olden life, if we are learning to dine on the produce of Demeter without toil.64

62

63

64

F. Kiechle, "Zur Verwendung der Schraube in der Antike," Technikgeschichte 34 (1967) 14-22. See also Schneider 64-66. See W. Burkert, "Perikles von Mylasa, Architekt des Tempels der Venus und Roma," in: Kotinos. Festschrift für Erika Simon, Mainz 1992, 415-417. Anthologia Palatina 9,418; cf. Schneider 45-49:

Ίσχετε χείρα μυλαΐον, άλετρίδες, εϋδετε μακρά, κήν δρθρον προλέγηι γήρυς άλεκτρυόνων.

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The 'olden days' of myth, the Golden Age returns, as manual labour is replaced by water energy. This is a statement which seems to anticipate the industrial revolution. And we should not belittle these first energy-producing machines, the water wheels, which have been kept in use down to our century. That the invention only spread in Roman times is not surprising in so far as the Mediterranean countries, especially Greece, are not favoured by resources of water power, in contrast, say, to Gaul. The biggest installation of a Roman water mill is found in the Provence. But still the discovery of water power did not make an epochal change and none was struck by the idea that this might have anything to do with those toys described by Heron, how to make a wheel spin through the power of steam. As to the mills, it would be mainly the slaves and the donkeys who were relieved or rather replaced - but who cared about their toil? O n the whole one might state that between about 2000 B.C., when the Neolithic Revolution had been followed by the invention of ceramics, the wheel, metalworking, and writing, and about 1800 A.D., when the industrial revolution fully started, there has been no comparable through-going change of life due to technology. There remains the consciousness of progress in science proper. This was restricted to a few specialists, selected by natural gift and personal inclination, there was no institutional education in science. We find some of the finest statements in Latin authors, especially in Seneca.65 In his Natural Questions, he writes: "We are still at the beginning. Only recently we have come to understand astronomical phenomena, the phases of the moon, eclipses, planets. There will come a time when,

Δηώ γαρ νύμφαισιν χερών έπετείλατο μοχθούς. αί δέ κατ ' άκροτάτην άλλόμεναι τροχιήν &ξονα δινεύουσιν. ό δ ' άκτίνεσσιν έλικταις στρωφάι Νισυρίων κοίλα βάρη μυλάκων. Γευόμεθ ' άρχαίου βιότου πάλιν, εί δίχα μόχθου δαίνυσθαι Δηοΰς έργα διδασκόμεθα. 65

See Edelstein 169-177; D o d d s 32.

Walter Burkert

42

what is still hidden now, will become visible in the course of days, by the diligence of a longer span of time. A single lifetime is not enough for research of such great things ... Through long successions these problems will be explained. There will come a time when our descendants will wonder that we did not know about such clear facts ... Let us be content with what has been found: Even the descendants will add to truth." 66 "How many animals we have come to know only in our time! How many things not even now! Much which is still unknown to us people of a future epoch will come to know."67 Natural science is a kind of mystery revelation: "Nature (rerum natura) does not transmit her sacred rites at one time. We think we are initiated, but we are still stuck in the forecourt... Some of this our age will come to see, other parts a later age which will come after us."68 "I revere the discoveries of wisdom, and its discoverers. It pleases me to approach the subject as a legacy left to me by many men ... Much remains to be done; much will remain; and no one born after thousands of centuries will be deprived of the chance of adding something in addition."69 Much of this is reminiscent of Aristotle's approach, especially the formulation of a 'legacy', recalling Aristotle's 'relay race', but Seneca does not believe that perfection is at hand: Future progress seems unlimited. As Pliny the Elder, Seneca's contemporary, briskly puts it: "Nobody should lose hope that centuries always make their progress," ne quis desperet saecula proficere semper™ It is strange to notice that the philosopher-emperor who wrote in Greek was much more pessimistic: "There is nothing new which those who come af-

66

Seneca, Quaestiones

naturales

7,25,4; cf. 6,5,3: " N o t h i n g is completed at its

very beginning... every succeeding generation will still find something to d o " ; ep. 33,11: " T h e truth is open to all. It has not yet been usurped. Much of it will be left even t o the future". 67

ib. 7,30,5.

68

ib. 7,30,6.

69

Seneca, Epistles 6 4 , 7 - 8 .

70

Pliny, Naturalis

historia 2,63, in the context of astronomy.

Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity

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ter us will see, nothing more special which those before us did see; in a way a man of 40 years, if he has some measure of intelligence, has seen everything that has happend and everything that will be, because it is so alike" - this is the verdict of Marcus Aurelius (11,1,3), joining the resignation of Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. A different key is struck with the decisive cultural revolution, the advent of Christianity. No wonder the rapid change from persecution to domination in the epoch of Constantine gave rise to the feeling that the world had taken a new course. At the same time, historical reflection revealed that it could not have been coincidence but divine providence that Christ was born in the time of Augustus, when the empire got that great and stable organization which allowed the smooth spread of the new faith; had this not been indicated to Augustus himself by the Sibyl, as Virgil's Fourth Eclogue testified? Christian theology develops as a theology of history, of historical progress. This finds its final form, and its revision, in Augustine. Agustine refutes and ridicules the doctrine of the 'circle' which had been held by the elder philosophers: "In the course of time something new arises, which does not have its end in time." 71 "The education of the human race has made progress in manifold growth, through certain sections of time, as if through increment of age."72 There are seven epochs of world history, Agustine holds in De civitate dei, the fifth ending with Christ, the sixth going on since then, to be terminated by an eternal 'sabbat'.73 To make Constantine's edict an epoch of its own seems precluded for Augustine because of the disastrous events that had struck the empire since, especially the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. Augustine's pupil Orosius, writing the Christian world history - completed in A.D.

71

72

73

Augustinus, De dvitate dei 12,14: "fit ergo aliquid novi in tempore, quod finem non habet temporis". ib. 10,14: "humani generis...recta eruditio per quosdam artículos temporum tamquam aetatum profecit accessibus". ib. 22,30.

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417 - has still another sequence: History, he writes in his introduction, is a terrifying collection of atrocities; yet there has been evolution towards the better: "Death, thirsty of blood, had reigned when the religion which holds back from blood was unknown; when this religion began to shine, death became stunned; death is coming to an end as religion has gained superiority now; death will thoroughly cease to exist, when this religion will reign alone - except for the last days," the epoch of the Antichrist which is to precede the end of the world; for the earlier periods, Orosius sets the demarcations with Augustus and Constantine. 74 To start chronology with the birth of Christ was not introduced before 525 A.D., in the work of Dionysius Exiguus. 75 Yet the ideology of profound change, of renewal of the world and the beginning of a process towards the reign of god goes much farther back within the Christian message. Already St. Paul wrote: "The old has passed; behold, the new has arisen" (II Cor. 5,17). "Behold, I make new everything," God himself proclaims in the Apocalypse (21,5). Clement of Alexandria, about A.D. 200, a Christian in full command of the classical paideia, writes in his Protreptikos: "Let us shut up tragedies and raving poets ... together with satyrs and the insane thiasos and the other chorus of demons, at Helikon and Kithairon, mountains infeebled with age; let us bring down truth from above, from heavens, together with brilliant insight..." 76 Helikon and Kithairon, the mountain of the Muses and the Mountain of Dionysus, i.e. Homer, Hesiod and tragedy altogether have 'grown old', Greek civilization is aging; Christian truth will overcome the senility of paganism. Paul's epistle to the Colossians had already declared: "The gospel is being brought to fruit in the whole world (kosmos), it is growing, just as it does grow in yourself, ever since the day that you have heard it and have recognized the grace of God in 74 75 76

Orosius, Historia contra paganos 1 prol.14. See Patrologia Latina 67, 487. Clemens Alexandrinus, Protrepticus 2,3.

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truth" (1,6). In other words, the process towards the triumph of Christianity has been started, it is going on not only in the hearts of people at Colossae but throughout the kosmos, and will not come to a halt. What the epoch of Constantine experienced was just confirmation of what had been proclaimed since the first days of the Christian movement. This dynamic view at a stroke surpassed what had motivated pagan thinkers to cling to the 'cycle' of a stable world. Yet even in the Christian view progress does not directly lead to an earthly paradise, on the contrary, 'apocalyptic' catastrophe is to be expected, and salvation will only be achieved in a transcendent dimension. It was only with the demise of spirituality at the dawn of modernity that unchecked progress of mankind could become a dominant ideology.

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Lon-

Brackert, H., F. Wefelmeyer (eds.) Kultur. Bestimmungen im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt, 1990 Burkert, W., Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, Cambridge, Mass., 1972 —, Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, Berkeley, 1983 —, Greek Religion Archaic and Classical, Oxford, 1985 Bury, J.B., The Idea of Progress, London, 1920 Cole, Th., Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology, Ann Arbor, 1967 CadufF, G.A., Antike Sintflutsagen, Göttingen, 1986 Comte, Α., Cours de philosophie positive, vol. IV, Paris, 1869 3 Diels, H., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6. ed., edited by W. Kranz, Berlin, 1951 (many reprints) - quoted as DK Dodds, E.R., The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity, Oxford, 1973/Der Fortschrittsgedanke in der Antike, Zürich, 1977 Edelstein, L., The Idea of Progress, Baltimore, 1967 Hankinson, R.J., "Galen's Concept of Scientific Progress," in: Aufstieg Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II 37.2, Berlin, 1994, 1775-1789

und

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Heinimann, F., Nomos und Pbysis. Herkunft und Bedeutung einer Antithese im griechischen Denken des 5. Jahrhunderts, Basel, 1945 Kinzig, W., Novitas Christiana. Die Idee des Fortschritts in der alten Kirche bei Eusebius, Göttingen, 1994 Kleingünther, Α., Protos Heuretes. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte einer Fragestellung, Leipzig, 1933 Lesher, J.H., Xenophanes of Colophon. Fragments, Toronto, 1992 Lovejoy, A.O., G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore, 1935 Meuli, K., Gesammelte Schriften, Basel, 1975 Mommsen, Th.E., "St. Augustine and the Christian Idea of Progress "Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951) 346 ff. Ritter, J., "Fortschritt," in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie II, Basel, 1972, 1032-1059 de Romilly, J., "Thucidide et l'idée de progrès," Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 35 (1966) 143-191 Schneider, H., Einführung in die antike Technikgeschichte, Darmstadt, 1992 Spoerri, W., Späthellenistische Berichte über Welt, Kultur und Götter, Basel, 1959 v. Uxkull-Gyllenband, W., Griechische Kulturentstehungslehren, Berlin, 1924 West, M.L., Hesiod. Theogony, Oxford, 1966 —, Hesiod. Works and Days, Oxford, 1978 West, S., "Prometheus Orientalized," Museum Helveticum 51 (1994) 129-149

A.C.

Crombie

Philosophical Commitments and Scientific Progress

Concerning the first generation of the universe this is the account which we have received. But the first men to be born, they say, led an undisciplined and bestial life, setting out one by one to secure their sustenance and taking for their food both the tenderest herbs and the fruits of wild trees. Then, since they were attacked by the wild beasts, they came to each other's aid, being instructed by expediency, and when gathered together in this way by reason of their fear, they gradually came to recognize their mutual characteristics. And though the sounds which they made were at first unintelligible and indistinct, yet gradually they came to give articulation to their speech, and by agreeing with one another upon symbols for each thing which presented itself to them, made known among themselves the significance which was to be attached to each term. But since groups of this kind arose over every part of the inhabited world, not all men had the same language, inasmuch as every group organized the elements of its speech by mere chance. This is the explanation of the present existence of every conceivable kind of language, and, furthermore, out of these first groups to be formed came all the original nations of the world (i.8).1

So wrote Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century B.C., reporting in his universal history the Greek speculations of four cen-

1

Diodorus of Sicily, with an English translation by C . H . Oldfather (Loeb: Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1936). See for what follows about antiquity L. Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, Md., 1967) and E.R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress and other Essays (Oxford, 1973); and more generally A.C. Crombie, "Some attitudes to scientific progress: ancient, medieval and early modern", History of Science, xiii (1975) 213-230, reprinted in Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Hambledon Press, London, 1990), and Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition, 3 vols. (Duckworth: London, 1994) for full discussion and references.

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turies earlier, following the visible Greek achievements in mathematics, medicine and philosophy. The concept of progress expresses an attitude to man's place in time and history, to the relation of his past to his future, that is both descriptive and prescriptive. It involves insights both into the progress of knowledge and its uses and into the possibilities and sources of knowledge, and also into the sources and progress or regress of happiness, power or moral virtue. The concept implies a desirable direction, hence the possibility of deviation, and value judgements about what ought and ought not to have been, and to be, done in man's dealings with nature, with himself and his fellow creatures, or with God. In other words, the concept of progress is at once profane and sacred, at once epistemological, cosmological and religious, in that it implies beliefs about knowledge, about what exists, and about man's origins, expectations and responsibilities within whatever is accepted as the scheme of knowledge and existence. The idea is found only at the most critical level of literacy and can be found only in societies with historical records and an historical sense. O n e would not expect to find a concept of progress in the Western sense in societies that either had no recorded history, or that looked for their meaning, their commitments and expectations, not in an historical relation between future and past but in timeless myths. So far as I know, of the great ancient civilizations, only the Greeks and Hebrews in the West and the Chinese in the East developed this sense of history. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Hindus seem to have been primarily mythopoeic. Equally one would not expect to find a concept of rational progress where the accepted source of knowledge was revelation, custom or authority as distinct from critical argument and evidence. The literary evidence, which perforce is all we have, records only the interests and concerns of the highly intellectual. But it is obvious that their view of both the possibility and the desirability of progress, or the reverse, towards some goal, sacred or profane, has been very much influenced, in the past as now, by the immediate experience of their societies. I propose then

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to examine briefly some of the crucial episodes in this Western search for meaning in history: the history from their origins of civilization, and of cosmic and organic evolution. As a proper, philosophical use of historiography, we might hope that the history of the idea might throw some light also upon ourselves. Any account of scientific progress must start with the specific style of rationality with which the ancient Greeks transformed the thinking they had inherited from their Egyptian and Babylonian predecessors. It is a style of thinking that may be traced to the Greek commitment to the decision of all questions by argument and evidence, as distinct from custom, edict, authority, revelation or some other practice. It was the Greek habit to make their style of rationality explicit, in the manner of Socrates, and in this manner European scientific thinking was initiated, by the ancient Greek philosophers, mathematicians and medical men, in their search for principles at once of nature, including human nature, and of argument itself. The Greeks introduced an exclusive form of rationality based on two fundamental ideas: universal, self-consistent and discoverable natural causality and, matching this, formal proof. From these two ideas came the essential style of Western philosophy, mathematics and natural science: the conception of a rational system, generated by the identification of problems as distinct from doctrines, the selective vision of the soluble, and the criteria of what counts as a solution, both in the particular and in general systems of theoretical explanation. The Greeks created within European culture a specific philosophical vision at once of knowledge and of the object of that knowledge, a vision at once of nature and of natural science, a vision explored and controlled exclusively by argument and evidence, including the evidence not simply of observation but of designed experiment. It entailed a style of rationality effectively competent to solve problems, in which an essential criterion for accepting a general system was that it could incorporate the solution of the particular. In this sense they in-

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vented the notion of a problem as distinct from a doctrine. They invented likewise the conception of nature as a general system, entailed by their initial commitment to universal causality, organized as science. They found the methods of the Babylonians and Egyptians, for example in astronomy and medicine, defective because they lacked physiologia, the science of nature. 2 Thus they invented the conceptions both of nature and of science. Neither is found in other ancient cultures. Both found a natural place in the philosophical monotheism developed in somewhat different forms by Plato and Aristotle, in which one divine designer or first cause of all that exists provided the stability and consistency essential for confidence in research and explanation. The decision, that among the possible worlds as envisaged in different cultures, the one world that exists is a world of exclusively self-consistent and discoverable natural causality, committed European scientific thinking exclusively to this effective direction, and closed others to it. The exclusive rationality so defined supplied the presuppositions, and came to supply the methods of reasoning and explanation, alike in formal discourse and in the experiential exploration of nature. Hence it offered rational control of subject-matters of all kinds, from mathematical to material, from ideas to things. Greek appraisals of the origins of civilization and expectations of its future established contrasting attitudes in Western historiography, depending from the beginning on general philosophy and particular experience. Attitudes to the history of civilization depended, for example, on whether it was held that the world was a product of design or of chance; that knowledge of the world was an open-ended process of finding out or could reach certainty; that man could with justice aspire to nobility or was merely an overweening animal. Diodorus stressed that "in all things it was necessity itself that became 2

Cf. Adrastus reported by Theon of Smyrna, Expositio rerum mathematicarum ad legendum Platonem utilium, recensuit E. Hiller (Leipzig, 1878) 177-8.

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man's teacher, supplying in appropriate fashion instruction in every matter to a creature which was well endowed by nature and had, as its assistants for every purpose, hands and speech and sagacity of mind". Necessity became a recurrent theme in Western interpretations of the history of civilization, reappearing for example in the fifth century A.D. in Proclus's account of the origin of mathematics and in the twelfth century in Hugh of St. Victor's account of the origin of all the arts. In the fifth century B.C. pride of achievement then and for the future was given to techné, skill used to advantage, both of mind and hand. This was how the authors of the Hippocratic works On ancient medicine and On the art of medicine saw things. The same pride in man's self-reliant intelligence, in discovery by research which raised him to mastery of earth and sea, of animals and minerals, of writing, and of such difficult sciences as mathematics, astronomy and medicine, can be glimpsed in a fragment of Xenophanes and more fully in the Prometheus of Aeschylus. By making Prometheus the giver not just of fire but of all the arts for power over nature, Aeschylus created one of the great symbolic figures of European consciousness. But in saying this in his famous essay on this whole subject, E.R. Dodds has drawn attention also to the sense of divine purpose in Aeschylus, and to the sense of the destructiveness of human cleverness, of man's ultimate helplessness, of the irrational and unteachable elements in his nature, and of the play of sheer chance in history, with which other observers, Sophocles and the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, coupled their recognition of the genuine advances they witnessed. At the heart of Greek thinking was the principle of reasoned control. Plato and Aristotle incorporated the principle of reasoned control, through general theories, of all particular subject-matters and activities, scientific, technical, aesthetic, moral, legal and political, into a general conception of all rational knowledge, all science and all art. Thus Plato described architectural theory as a "directive science" (p. 110; Statesman 260 Α-B), controlling the construction of a building by mea-

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sûrement and calculation. Any artist or craftsman, he wrote, in making something, "has before his mind the form or idea" (p. 110; Republic χ, 596B) of what he is going to make, just as the divine maker modelled the world from the eternal forms. Similarly the science of rhetoric, by an analysis and classification of types of person and types of argument, could show "what type of person is susceptible to what type of argument" (p. 107; Phaedrus 271E), and so could provide a powerful instrument of persuasion for lawyers, politicians and denizens of the mediatic world. Plato set out in his various writings the historic fact that the rational mastery gained by logical analysis and synthesis gave a unique power to manipulate matter and mind alike, whether for truth or for effect. Rational analysis, design and control were again for Aristotle what distinguished the human race, which "lives by art and reasonings", from other animals and enabled man alone to invent, choose, learn, and "know the cause" (p. 250; Metaphysics vi.l), and so to progress. For "from art proceed the things of which the form is in the soul of the artist" (p. 250; vii.7). "All art is concerned ... with contriving or considering how something may come into being ... whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made" (p. 258; Nicomacbean Ethics vi.4). "In all the arts and sciences both the end and the means should be equally within our control" (p. 251; Politics vii.l3). Always, sound practice required sound antecedent reasoning, and sound reasoning was endorsed by practical success, whether concerning nature or human behaviour. Plato saw the history of civilization as the history of technical progress and moral decline, and the tension between awareness of these contrasting tendencies became characteristic of the later Greco-Roman world. Scientists like Aristotle and Archimedes retained their confidence in the capacity of their scientific methods and the desirability of their results, and this was confirmed in practice by the brilliant Greek performance in the mathematical and medical sciences down to Ptolemy and Galen. But moral philosophers were on the whole more sceptical about the value of such achievements.

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Plato used the myth of the Golden Age for contemporary social criticism. The Cynics preached rejection of all social conventions and a return to the simple life. The Stoics developed a second ancient myth, of the Great Year, into their deterministic theory of time as an endless succession of cyclical returns. Each cycle ended with the dissolution of the world into its elements in a universal conflagration, followed by its regeneration, and so on and on, exactly repeating the same events over and over again, leaving room only for acceptance without initiative or responsibility. The Epicureans likewise left no room for ultimate hope in developing Democritus's atomism into their cosmogony of meaningless chance which generated the human race. The rise of civilization for Lucretius was man's intelligent response to need in a world where he stood alone, but with civilization man became at the same time more vainly acquisitive and destructive. Dodds has noted other opinions from this period: that the Greek way of life had corrupted even the neighbouring barbarians, that nature had done more for the Scythians than philosophy for the Greeks, and Prometheus was rightly punished for introducing man to the arts of civilization. The Stoic Seneca, like Lucretius and later Diodorus Siculus, thought that the Earth might be growing less fecund and Rome too losing its vigour. Yet both the Stoic Posidonius and the Epicurean Lucretius showed respect for scientific and technical advance and interest in its origins, and Seneca could write: "The time will come when careful research over very long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden ... when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things to them so obvious" {Naturales quaestiones vii.25). Knowledge of these things was for the few and not for application. Contemporary writers on science and technology, for example Vitruvius and the elder Pliny, continued to expect advances in those fields, but belief in general progress was not characteristic of the ancient world. The vision of existence was limited by moira, the normative order of the universe keeping everything both physically and morally within the boundaries of its

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nature. Lucretius seems to have thought that the arts of civilization had already reached their perfection. Plato and Aristotle in their different ways both saw the development of knowledge as the fulfilment of a delimited pre-existing model or form. For Aristotle, the subject of many commentaries after the editing of his collected works in the first century B.C., the advances made by the arts and sciences in each civilization were the fulfilment of the potentialities of their natural form beyond which they could not go. This was a structural rather than temporal view of history, on which he imposed the same structural teleological conception of causation as he used in organizing his biology and cosmology. The Western search for meaning in time and history was transformed by the entry into philosophical debate of the Hebrew and Christian theology of creation. The first systematic confrontation of Greek philosophy with that theology came in the 1st century B.C. with Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, the last great thinker of a line of Hellenized Jews in Alexandria.3 Philo came both directly and through St. Augustine of Hippo and other routes to bring about a radical revision of later Christian, Jewish and Moslem thinking about the relation of God to the world and to mankind. Plato had proposed in the Timaeus that the order of nature had been imposed on pre-existing material chaos by God acting with rationally provident goodness following necessarily from his own perfection. Aristotle had argued that the world was a necessary and eternal emanation from the First Cause, in which man could discover by reasoning the necessary reasons why the world must be so, was best so, and could not be otherwise. The Stoics had conceived God as a material, eternally active principle which had created the world and remained within it as the cause of its immutable order. Philo followed by St. Augustine readily accepted the Greek conception of immutable causality which determined

3

De opificio mundi, with an English translation by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker, i (Loeb: London and Cambridge, Mass., 1929).

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the order of the world, but looked elsewhere for the true source of that order. This they argued was not the Greek divine rational necessary principle operating within nature and fully knowable to man, but the inscrutable, omnipotent God of Abraham, the Creator utterly distinct from his creation, which he had made freely according to his own reasons. Those reasons were knowable to man only in so far as they could be discovered by an exegesis of what God had himself revealed to us, both in the Book of Holy Scripture and in the Book of Nature. Causality came to be incorporated into a theology of laws of nature laid down by the Creator. "The most customary course of all this nature", wrote Augustine, "has certain natural laws (naturales leges) of its own" (De Genesi ad litteram ix. 17). The laws of nature were the laws of numbers, exemplified to the senses in time and space in motion, "obeying God in all things" (De musica vi.58), "by the unfolding of their proper measures and numbers and weights" (De Trinitate iii.9.16). For, as Dante put it, "dove Dio senza mezzo governa, la legge natural nulla rileva (where God governs without intermediate, the natural law has no relevance)" (Paradiso xxx.122-3). Created laws re-established the stable predictability of nature within Hebrew-Christian doctrine. The separation of God from nature opened the boundaries of scientific discovery closed by the Aristotelian conception of a completed science, even though conflicting exegeses of the two Books brought other troubles. To a number of Christian writers, notably the Emperor Constantine's theological adviser and historian Eusebius, and indeed Constantine himself, the recent triumph of the Church was evidence both of the operado Dei in human history and of the material benefits for which Christians could look from the same hand. Tertullian had given an arrestingly topical picture of mankind in progress: "If you look at the world as a whole, you cannot doubt that it has grown progressively more cultivated and populated. Every territory is now accessible, every territory explored, every territory opened to commerce ...: everywhere people, everywhere organized communities, ev-

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erywhere human life. Most convincing as evidence of populousness, we men have actually become a burden to the Earth, the fruits of nature hardly suffice to sustain us, there is a general pressure of scarcity giving rise to complaints, since the Earth can no longer support us" (De anima xxx).4 The Western vision of man's place in time and history was sharply refocused for almost a millennium and a half by St. Augustine. In his great work the City of God (xii.10, 12, 14, 20-22, xxii.24), written as an exegesis of the true divine meaning of the fall of Rome to Alaric in 410 A.D., he attacked both the pagan assertion that Rome's calamities were a consequence of the neglect of the gods, and the Christian expectation of material advantage from the true religion. Most important of all he attacked the Stoic theory of cyclical returns, of an endless succession of periodic catastrophes and regenerations of the world and the human race. In such a merry-go-round there was no room for the divinely promised hope of progress towards happiness through knowledge of God. We could not believe that Plato would endlessly recur teaching the same philosophy to the same disciples, or worse that Christ would die and die again upon the cross. But we could believe that each individual was able to move on a unique course towards true happiness, and that God had created the world and the human race uniquely with a definite beginning, progressing through linear time towards a definite end at the Last Judgement. Thus in the ordered course of God's providential government every event was unique, every human decision responsible, and every action both of individuals and in the succession of ages at once a genuine novelty and the fulfilment of a purpose. Within this scheme of Creation, Fall and Redemption, of the unique passage through linear time of responsible individuals moving towards eternity, which Christianity gave to the Western vision of history, Augustine left no doubt that progress in the

4

Translated in C . N . Cochrane, Christianity 1944) 246.

and Classical Culture

(Oxford,

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human sciences and arts was definitely secondary. Yet in the last book of the City of God he gave an attractive account of the inventions and discoveries which God's mercy had allowed even sinful man to make in the course of history through his genius and industry. Some were useful and necessary, some dangerous and harmful, and all had to be seen within the complete picture of man's spiritual destiny. Within that destiny scientific investigations were a proper offering to the Creator in return for his gift of intelligence. The simplicity of Christian certainty about the origin, purpose and end of the world and of man provided a powerful, though not of course sufficient, disposition towards the development of scientific thought. It offered hope, both morally, and scientifically in that stable laws of nature could be securely investigated. The conception of the natural world as the product of a rational and benevolent Creator and of man as made in his image was an invitation to use the gifts of reason and the senses to follow his thoughts. Kepler was to say just that. 5 At any rate, this view both of history and of nature was projected by Augustine on to the Latin West where natural science did eventually rise to become a major element of intellectual and practical culture, despite the ups and downs of theological and institutional controversy. It was the medieval institution of the universities that provided a further essential condition for the stable and organized pursuit of intellectual curiosity. Western science developed from the 12th century as a series of responses to Greek thought recovered through translations into Latin. With them came fresh apprehensions of continuity or discontinuity with the past and fresh programmes projected therefrom. Bernard of Chartres compared his contemporaries to "dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants", able to see more and farther than them "because we can raise ourselves up

5

Kepler to Herwart von Hohenburg, 9/10 April 1599, Gesammelte xiii, ed. M. Caspar (München, 1945) 309.

Werke,

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thanks to their giant stature". 6 Roger Bacon in the 13th century again looked back in order to look more confidently forward, by avoiding the "causes of error" 7 to which he attributed current scientific failings, and by means of his conception of experimental and mathematical science. His programme comprised as much the recovery and true exegesis of ancient texts as the advance of new knowledge. He cited with approval Seneca's respect alike for ancient wisdom and for intellectual progress, for "the study of wisdom can always increase in this life, because nothing is perfect in human discoveries. Hence we of a later age should supply what the ancients lacked, because we have entered into their labours, by which, unless we are asses, we can be aroused to better things; since it is wretched to be always using and never making discoveries". 8 Naturally we should ourselves make a critical exegesis of what he understood by a discovery. The scholars and philosophers who from the 14th century came to establish so much of the basic methods and conceptions of modern historiography, the historiography of the sciences and arts as of literature, theology and politics, again habitually presented interpretations of the past carrying with them formulae for contemporary action. Hence came the continuing search for the best ancient models, given new forms with increasing historical knowledge, and hence in consequence the division of history into periods carrying an evaluation beyond mere chronology. It seems to have been Petrarch who first used the term médius tempus with the sense of a dark age lasting for a thousand years until his own time, when Latin poetry was revived and Italian vernacular poetry reborn (renata). The Florentine historian Filippo Villani described certain events as happening "in ancient, medieval and modern times (priscis, mediis, modernisque temporibus)". In general the 6

7 8

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon libri Hi, iii.4, ed. C.C.J. Webb (Oxford, 1929). Roger Bacon, Opus mains, i, ed. J.H. Bridges, vol. ii (Oxford, 1897). Ibid. ii. 15, vol. ili (London, 1900) 69-70.

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humanists who established this three-fold division of European history gave to the term media tempestas a sense of total darkness, in order to promote the enlightenment which they saw coming from ancient models of all kinds: from the republican political virtues of ancient Rome, from the pure Latin style of classical literature, and from the naturalistic ideal of ancient painting and sculpture in the imitation of nature first fully achieved by Giotto. La renascita then, the term used by the 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari, was crowned by "that excellence which, by surpassing the achievements of the ancients, has rendered the modern age so glorious" {Le vite ili, Proemio). 9 Philosophical historians like Machiavelli and Jean Bodin, looking for the causes of the progress or regress of civilization in different periods, could thus project their historical analyses into programmes for present advantage or reform and future advance, or perhaps into diagnoses of decline or stagnation. They studied history in order to manage, or at least to anticipate, its course. Hence the successive proposals for true methods, whether for philosophy, science, art, theology or government, which are so evident in Western culture from the age of Roger Bacon to that of Francis Bacon and Descartes. Hence also the claims to novelty: to have discovered like the Neoplatonist Francesco Patrizi the "new, true, complete philosophy of the universe", ambitiously so "proved with divine oracles, geometrical necessities, philosophical reasons and the clearest experiments"; or more realistically to be practising like William Gilbert a "new sort of philosophizing", or to have invented like Francis Bacon a novum Organum, or like Galileo "new sciences" based on his heroic model Archimedes. 10 Authors of such claims were inclined like Aristotle to examine the history of thought not so much to understand its modes in the

9 10

Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking, Ibid. pp. 28-9.

p. 28.

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past as to use them to promote their own true way in the present. Reforming visions may thus show us the intellectual tradition of Western science in varied and peculiar lights. Through the historical diversity of the reforming programmes, whether concerned more immediately with scientific methods and research or more generally with the beliefs and motives of society, we may see the diversity of conceptions of the rational, the possible, the desirable and the acceptable. To the historiography of a political, literary and artistic renaissance, Erasmus added in the 16th century a further element with his conception of a close causal connection between the decline or revival of learning and those of religion. The renaissance of religion then came to be identified in Protestant historiography with the fortunes of the Protestant reformation. Science was brought into this scheme by such philosophical reformers as Peter Ramus, Francis Bacon and Descartes, using the warning of past stagnation to promote their new optimism for mathematical and experimental methods. Later in the dispute of the Ancients and Moderns the recent scientific triumphs replaced antiquity with progress as the guiding vision. "So true it is", Dryden wrote in 1668 of the past hundred years of discoveries, "that nothing spreads more fast than science, when rightly and generally cultivated". 11 An exemplary linking of the revival of classical learning, the Protestant reformation, and the rise of the new philosophy as stages in the liberation of the inquiring mind was set out at the end of the century by Pierre Bayle. Put together over two centuries through a series of disparate issues this scheme has had its full influence on that large part of the historiography of science in which it has been assumed, in Walter Ralegh's phrase, that it was "the end and scope of all historie, to teach by example of times past, such wisdome as may guide our desires and actions". 12 Whatever wisdom his-

11 12

Ibid. p. 47. Ibid. pp. 29-30.

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tory may teach us, the obvious disadvantage of a periodization in evaluative terms like dark ages or renaissance, or like reformation, new philosophy, scientific revolution or enlightenment, as also the obvious disadvantage of simply assuming a linkage of apparently separate issues, whether in the pursuit of some view of the human condition or of truth or liberty, or in some causal series, is that such assumptions can cloud scholarly examination of thinking and beliefs in their own proper historical context. They tell us more about the periods in which they were invented than those to which they refer. J.B. Bury in 1920 defined progress as the idea "that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction", and that it does so as a "necessary outcome of the psychical and social nature of man", independent of any notion of divine or natural providence.13 For this as a systematic view of history we have to look first to Voltaire and Condorcet. But for Herder for example the analogy of time was not the linear geometrical indefinite progress of the French philosophes, but rather the Aristotelian time of embryological development from a beginning to the realization of a specific natural end. Different human cultures, arts and sciences, like different plants and animals, had their own optimal periods for fulfilling their potentialities, depending upon native character and external circumstances. By the early 19th century the concept of historical development had become established over a wide range of subject-matters and of human experience, from cosmology, geology and biology to anthropology and philology and, with Cardinal Newman, theology. Long after Voltaire all this, as well as progress in both knowledge and virtue, was still conceived as occurring within a providential design, implicitly even by Charles Darwin. But in Darwinian thinking the major modern shift was also present, from a conception of progress in some direction seen as desirable, to a conception of time and

13

Bury, The Idea of Progress (London, 1920) 2, 5; cf. Crombie, ibid. pp. 1588, 1776 n.8.

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history as merely a meaningless, open-ended, interminable succession. We have mostly lost the sense of both cosmological and historical design. This post-progress outlook contrasts in a way strangely with the evangelical desire, deeply embedded in Western scientific culture, to discover and spread true knowledge towards some better future. Science itself is not monolithic, but is diversified in different ways. Within the commitments, established by the ancient Greeks at the beginnings of Western science, to the decision of questions by argument and evidence, and to the conceptions of causality and proof, scientific thinking became diversified into a number of different styles of inquiry, demonstration and explanation. I have identified a taxonomy of six. The novelty was in the style. There is a logical and chronological sequence, in which each style arose in a cultural context where an assembly of different but cognate subject-matters, scientific, artistic, economic and so on, was united under a common form of argument. Styles became diversified by the diverse subject-matters addressed, by general conceptions of nature and of science and the expectations they entail, and by scientific experience of the interactions of programmes with realizations. A scientific style, with its commitments, identified certain regularities in nature, which became the object of its inquiry, and defined its questions, methods and kinds of evidence appropriate to acceptable answers within that style. Three styles were developed in the subject-matters of individual regularities, and three in the subject-matters of regularities of populations ordered in space and time: (1) postulation, as in Greek geometry, (2) the experimental argument, both to control postulation and to explore, (3) hypothetical modelling, (4) taxonomy, (5) probabilistic and statistical analysis, (6) historical derivation. These six styles are all different, addressing different aspects of nature, often supposing different kinds of world, but they are frequently combined in any particular research. Each both creates its own subject-matter and is created by it. A change of style introduces not only new subject-matter, but also new questions about the same subject-matter. Scientific progress is

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thus not linear, but takes the form of branches growing at different levels in a variety of directions. Moreover scientific propositions are of different kinds. All science is not tested in the same way. Propositions asserting factual regularities can be tested by direct observation and are usually stable. Those asserting abstract explanations involving theoretical entities must be tested indirectly by their consequences, and they tend to be replaced with the development of theory by others more adequate, either in precision or in generality. In a different relation to any scientific system are propositions not explicitly offered for testing but nevertheless fundamental. These are changed by re-thinking. They include the axioms assumed in logic and mathematics, general principles of nature such as economy and sufficient reason, and more particularly reductive programmes such as those of mechanism, teleology and fields. All of these presuppose the kind of world to be discovered by science, and so regulate the expectations both of questions and of answers. When they change there is a scientific revolution. Progress may occur then at different levels and in different forms. Factual knowledge progressively accumulates. Theoretical change may increase the power and generality of explanations, and it may open new horizons of inquiry and new questions to put to nature. It may involve a change of commitments and styles, as when design gave way to statistics in the argument for natural selection. At another level there may be changes in commitments, entailed by general beliefs and expectations concerning human existence, to the value and purpose of scientific knowledge and its applications. These may count as progressive or the reverse. But nature stays put, and reason consistent. Hence the objectivity of science. You cannot cheat nature, as Galileo had it, however much you may cheat your fellow men.

Shigeru Nakayama

The Chinese "Cyclic" View of History vs. Japanese "Progress"

Astronomical Background of the Chinese Cyclic View of Nature History repeats itself. W h e n the ancients identified cyclic movements in the heavens, they naturally must have been struck with the idea that terrestrial events conform to the celestial cycles, and that everything under the heavens repeats itself. Thus in the ancient world was born the cyclic view of nature as well as of human events, which is logically incompatible with the notion of positive progress. This is particularly true for the Chinese mentality, which maintained the principle of Yin and Yang, to counterbalance positive and negative. T h e Chinese were quite aware that technology and material culture had become more elaborate over time, but they kept this idea so carefully segregated from their cyclical view of society and politics that there was no need to inquire into what would bother someone today as the tension between the two. T h e notion of periodical cataclysmic destructions and recreations of the physical world existed in ancient Chinese civilization, as among the Indians and Greeks. Over the last three centuries B . C . Chinese thinkers made great cycles the basis of a cosmology that encompassed everything under the heavens. T h e y gave it an astronomical basis by beginning and ending these cycles with a grand conjunction, when the sun, moon, and planets are together in one division of the sky, and all the calendrical cycles begin simultaneously.

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The dynastic cycles reenact this cosmic rhythm, which explains history and subsumes all social institutions at the same time as it patterns Nature. It justified the new centralized imperial order and patterned its rituals.

Astronomical Precision as Prototype of Progress As the lengths of the solar, lunar, and planetary cycles were determined more precisely by observation, the length of a great cycle, because it was the least common multiplier of the increasingly elaborate numbers, increased by many orders of magnitude. By roughly the time of Christ, it had become so large that it had lost its connection to practical measures of length and was finally abandoned. Simple cyclic methods could no longer maintain the old cosmological scheme. At this point, there were two ways out. O n e was to abandon the astronomical basis for purely numerological cycle-counting; the other was to abandon the cyclic view of nature. 1 The first alternative was to replace increasingly complex and abstract numbers based, however indirectly, on empirical procedures, with simple symbolic numbers such as those associated with qualitative discourse based on the Five Phases and sexagesimal year-month-day cycles. Such a move could have led to fantastic number mysticism like that of Indian cosmology. It could have been more tempered, like the move in Greek and later European mathematical astronomy away from a luni-solar calendar (based on the actual spring equinox and new moons) and toward the Egyptian calendar with its integral number of days in a month and a year. The Chinese were too committed to their cyclic view of nature to move in either of these directions.

Nathan Sivin, Cosmos and Computation Astronomy, (Leiden: E . J . Brill, 1969).

in Early Chinese

Mathematical

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Greek adherence to the idea of cosmos as harmony was also challenged by the discovery that the lengths of month and year are incommensurable, so that intercalation cannot be treated as a simple harmonious relationship. This problem did not cause Europeans to move away from a rational astronomy based on geometrical models until the ideal was compromised beginning in Kepler's time. The Chinese, on the other hand, abandoned rational astronomy based on simple postulates, preferring numerical and later algebraic methods of computation and giving priority to empirical agreement with celestial phenomena. In reality, however, even with the demise of cyclic view of nature, the Chinese continued to solve problems dealing with the great-cycle conjunction as the origin of calendrical cycles in mathematical textbooks as late as the fourteenth century. This became conventional set-piece using indeterminate equations, a most interesting problem for astronomers and mathematicians. The grand conjunction ceased to play an important role in calendrical calculation two thousand years ago but was not formally abandoned until the thirteenth century when it was replaced by an epoch in the recent past. At this point cyclic numbers, expressed as fractions, were also replaced by decimal numbers. This coincided with the era of highest achievement in basic astronomical observations as the Chinese defined them, far surpassing in some respects the earlier Greek and Islamic achievements. In those days, the notion of progress in the precision of observation took firm root in astronomers' minds. They did not hesitate to say, in a society that normally put its glories in the distant past, that "the astronomical techniques of the ancients were less precise than those of today's system." A result of the increasing precision of astronomy was the 'discovery' that the length of a tropical year had changed over history. Astronomers had found that it was possible to reconcile ancient observations (or records) of solstices with precise contemporary observations using an algebraic formula that

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made year length shorter as time went on. This would have been utterly impossible in Greco-Islamic astronomy, in which the supralunar world was believed to be invariable.

The Chinese Notion of Slow Historical Rather Than Spatial Progress As noted above, astronomers were the first to postulate progress over time. Even as early as the time of Ptolemy, Chinese astronomers must have been aware that angle measurements of celestial positions were increasing in precision. With a continuous improvement over time, astronomers were, by the thirteenth century, proud of the radical progress they had made in determining the exact time of syzygies. This was not just a matter of meticulous observation; the precise measurement of time had also begun to improve. Modern Western technology and its associated time consciousness have shaped the idea of progress over the past three hundred years. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "progress" itself changed its meaning during the seventeenth century, from a movement through space to advancement with earthly time, to a progress of advancement with the passing of earthly time. As utopia was no longer placed in unknown distant lands, dreams of perfection came to be projected into the future.2 Unlike the Western evolution of intellectual and cultural activities, in which the geographical center has moved from one place to another since Babylonian times, China has remained central (and the location of its capital irrelevant to this cosmological centrality) in the East Asian tradition since the first millennium B. C. In this respect as well as in those already dis-

2

Samuel L. Macey, "Literary Images of Progress: The Fate of an Idea," J. T. Fraser, Ν. Lawrence, and F. C. Haber (eds.) Time, Space, and Society in China and the West (University of Massachusetts Press, 1986) p. 93ff.

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cussed, the Chinese sense of history and progress differs radically from that in the European tradition. The Chinese experienced slow continuous progress over time in one geographical location, as evidenced most clearly in the increase of astronomical precision. Instead of the spatial progress characteristic of the Western tradition, the Chinese have nurtured a sense of history that has let their linear temporal progress coexist with the older cosmological notion of cyclic recurrence. In that intellectual climate, China became the home of one of the greatest historiographical traditions, in which history provided a paradigm for scholarship. 3 This provides quite a contrast with the medieval European scholastics, who ignored history in search of eternal, invariable Truth.

The Japanese Variation on the Chinese Paradigm In China bureaucratic inertia played a role in maintaining a sense of continuous history, but the Japanese lacked such formal, rigid institutions. Japanese intellectuals could thus flexibly accept change originating inside or outside their national boundaries. I have mentioned earlier in this article the thirteenth-century Chinese notion of a secular change in year length. Although it was eventually abandoned in China, Japanese astronomers in the late seventeenth century revived it, on the assumption that such a minute quantity must have been based on exceedingly precise observations. In the late eighteenth century, Japanese astronomers extended this idea of celestial change to every astronomical parameter and adopted it for some time in their official calendar.

3

Joseph Needham, "Time and Knowledge in China and the West," in J.T. Fraser (ed.), The Voices of Time, reprinted in Needham, The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965).

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Ogiu Sorai (1666-1728), a leading Japanese Confucian scholar, supported the idea of celestial change, claiming that "heaven and earth, sun and moon are living bodies." Since heavenly bodies are organic, they should be subject to incessant change. There can be nothing like eternal truth. 4

Japanese Recognition of Progress During the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the Japanese were making their own judgments about whether, on the whole, things Chinese or Western were better. In medicine, which concerned and interested everyone, there was no obvious basis for judging the superiority of one over the other, and in clinical practice eclecticism and complementarity prevailed. O n the other hand, astronomy offered objective standards for assessing the two cultures, such as precision in predicting of eclipses. Thus, Japanese astronomers were shocked in the early eighteenth century, when they noticed that the Chinese had adopted Western parameters and observational values already in the mid-seventeenth century. This discovery came late because of the shogunate's seclusion policy. Once Japanese scientists realized what progress had been made in Western astronomical precision, they without further ado abandoned the Chinese paradigm for the Western one. They made this fateful shift of allegiance solely on the grounds of astronomical precision. Their recognition of Western superiority over the Chinese was gradually extended to other fields science. Some, of course, unaccustomed to the notion of rapid progress or unwilling to value a culture on such narrow criteria, demurred on the grounds that since the pa-

4

Shigeru Nakayama, "Japanese Scientific Thought," Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XV, (Scribners, 1978) pp. 731-2.

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rameters of Western astronomy change, they cannot be reliable. Progress of Normal Science Development As indicated in the above, progress is a characteristic of normal science (in Thomas Kuhn's original sense). The precision of astronomical observations is a paradigmatic example of progress. No scientific revolution is required to establish its fundamental criterion: "the better the precision, the more valuable." That simple value system has survived since the beginning of astronomy. One does not have to be a scientist to conclude from Kuhn's analysis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that scientific progress cannot be permanent, for revolutions change the value system that defined progress. Only those engaged in research on a given line of normal science will find it progressive. It does not appear to be progress for those who do not share the same value system. Laymen recognize progress in more materialistic terms, generally judging it by technological elaboration. The precision of machine tools is as basic as astronomical precision was for early scientists. In the modern world, technological precision is often derived from scientific precision. Hence educated people are persuaded that technological progress is based on scientific progress. When we consider the intermediate technologies prevalent in nineteenth-century non-European development, we can no longer apply such a simple value system as mechanical precision. At this point, the value of linear progress has to be replaced with appropriateness to the circumstances in which a multi-valued technological system is at work.

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Proliferation rather than One-Dimensional Progress A society or community that depends on a professionalized and narrowly defined paradigm may appear from its own point of view to be progressing. Those who believe in progress come to depend on one-dimensional measures. To those who do not share their value system such a claim is nonsense. For instance, applying a simple technological yardstick, Japanese ceramics like teabowls, which did not evolve handles, remain functionally premodern, primitive and hence inferior, compared with those produced in Islamic and Western culture. The orthogenetic notion of progress turns out to be ridiculous when brought to bear on complex matters such as arts and crafts, where the diversity of values rules out facile appraisals of superiority. Archaeologists prove that primitive artifacts proliferate as they evolve in different climate and geographical settings. In modern market-oriented production, however, advanced technology can endlessly create demand by junking its predecessors as obsolete. Modern capitalistic production and open market economies sacrifice convenience, amenity and fit to local environment in the name of progress. If cultural proliferation cannot be called progress, then the idea of progress remains useful only in a very limited sense, that is, to replace the preceding with the new one on some simple criterion of value. An obvious example is the measure of central processing unit speed in computers, which leads to an announcement every six or nine months that what recently became the latest and most advanced computer is now obsolete. The increasingly predominant way of defining progress, regardless of how much effort goes into it, cannot be convincingly applied to more complex systems that depend on plural values and human needs. Although the language used in advertising fashions in clothing is larded with assertions about progress, no aspect of modern industry is more cyclical and dependent on rummaging in the past.

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The modern world has seen the growth of such simplistic paradigms in a good number; many, independent of each other and some contradicting each other. In sum, it may appear that a modern multi-paradigmatic society is progressing, when a particular component paradigm makes its own progress.

Progress of Military Technology The next example of one-dimensional progress was the development of modern military technology, in which the measurement of progress is made with a simple yardstick: that which wins. The Japanese state of mind was perhaps flexible enough to accept the Western notion of progress. But the threat of the Western subjugation in the middle of nineteenth century reduced the basis of such judgments to the simple criterion of progress and superiority in military technology. The value system of Western imperialism, rather than the philosophy of enlightenment, became the key to future. The first impression that Western progress made on alert samurais came from news of the Opium War of the 1840s in China. For ordinary Japanese, it was the American gunboats anchored in Tokyo Bay in 1853. Japanese judged correctly that the moral and ethical progress of mankind in the mode of Condorcet was beside the point. That notion of progress was for those confident of victory. Asians, understanding that such victories would make them losers, faced it with mixed feelings. It took until the 1870s before Japanese intellectuals, and Westernization-oriented government as well, recognized Condorcetian progress lay in the background of Western military superiority. The Chinese were slower to appreciate this process. The Japanese word for "progress" was coined from Neo-Confucian antecedents and was soon adapted into the Chinese language. Japanese intellectuals eventually distinguished the imperialistic interest of nation states from individual human nature. Before that point, the early impression of military progress

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was so predominant, among Japanese as among other nonWestern peoples, that when they contemplated the faith of the Enlightenment they were overwhelmed by a sense of its builtin contradictions. I conclude this section with these reflections that progress can be measured only in simple matters as astronomical precision, technological precision of machine tools, and military destructiveness. It has played no historic role in such matters as the ethical and moral perfection of human society as well as individuals.

Conclusion: Darwinian vs. Condorcetian Progress I have pointed out that in the nineteenth-century military superiority impressed the value of progress on non-Western people. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Chinese and Japanese specialists and intellectuals had recognized Western superiority solely in astronomical precision and, in Japan alone, in anatomy (which is not the same as medical practice). They pointedly did not generalize from the technical domain to others they valued more, such as moral philosophy. For the Chinese, military superiority became the measure of progress during the period of hostilities in the 1840s. People had good reason to abandon the older criterion of scientific precision as they strove, for the sake of survival, to catch up with rapid Western advances in the manufacture of firearms and the construction of warships. The Japanese, by comparing Chinese and Western astronomy, had acknowledged Western superiority in the early eighteenth century. News in the mid-nineteenth century prompted the samurai class (which had abandoned firearms in the seventeenth century and had practically no experience of military action since then) to master the art of artillery for the defense of their country. Those early leaders must have had sleepless nights for the "struggle for existence," a Social Darwinian term.

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With the change of political regime in 1868, the new Japanese government and modernizing intellectuals began to Westernize in earnest, as a matter of state policy, and since then European enlightenment philosophy has played a certain role in the ideology that supported this effort. When these reformists coined a Japanese word for progress, what they had in mind was not the ideals of Condorcet. They were simply adapting for local purposes the nationalistic Social Darwinian version of progress that social and political propagandists in Europe had created out of Darwinism. The Japanese thus always measured progress by comparison with the West, first in military superiority in the prewar period and in material wealth in postwar time. "Progress or perish" and "Progress for survival" became their state-authorized slogans. The progress of human nature, its ethical and moral character, played no part in this calculus. Even after the high economic growth of the 1960s, the Japanese government and industry sectors seem not to be liberated from the paranoia of Darwinian progress.

Jean Blondel

Political Progress: Reality or Illusion?

The view that there might be social and political progress is relatively recent. Admittedly, in Ancient Rome or in Renaissance Italy, the idea of progress in human societies was sometimes put forward; but the bulk of the population continued to live on the basis of 'ancestral traditions'. Political theorists also occasionally referred to progress, but this was rare or somewhat twisted. One can argue that, for Hobbes, for instance, there is progress in the notion that the 'Sovereign' can enable us to overcome the 'nasty, brutish, and short' character of the state of nature. Only with Locke does the idea begin to prevail that society might genuinely 'improve' politically. In reality, the true take-off of the idea of progress was in the middle of the eighteenth century with the publication of the Encyclopedia. After the hiatus of the French Revoulution and of the Napoleonic wars, during which the idea that there might be political progress was seriously undermined, an era of optimism began. The industrial revolution led to massive changes in modes of living from which all gradually benefitted, in the West at least. Social progress became then closely linked to technical and economic change. The great exhibitions of the second half of the nineteenth century, from that of 1851 in London onwards, were monuments to the idea that humankind was from now on moving to a better future. Social progress became translated into political progress. The ideas of liberty and democracy had existed for a long time; but they were more symbols or 'utopias', as the sixteenth cen-

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tury English thinker, Thomas More, had said. These utopias seemed on the verge of becoming reality, if not in Europe, since the French revolution had turned sour and the 1848 revolutions had been defeated, but in America where many were able to implement their 'progressive' ideas and where, in general, the political system was, from the presidency of Jackson in the 1830s, 'democratic'. Old Europe itself was in turn to adopt gradually some of the ideas of the New World. This optimistic trend ended with the First World War during and after which the idea of social and political progress appeared once more to be an illusion: the dictatorships installed in the 1920s and 1930s in Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, and other European countries were indeed more brutal than anything which had been seen before in Europe. Could one talk about political progress when such deeds as the extermination of Jews were taking place on the Continent? Yet, within a decade or so, optimism returned. With the end of the Second World War and the victory of the democracies, a new opportunity for political 'progress' seemed to open up, the United Nations being the symbol of this new hope. Optimism was also fuelled by the gradual end of colonialism and the emergence of 'new' countries, which appeared to begin a fresh start, as had been the case in the United States in the late eighteenth century. Meanwhile, it became widely recognised that improvements in what was to be known as the Third World entailed profound economic and social changes in agriculture, industry, education, health, and welfare. Such changes were labelled economic and social 'development', the new and more modern name given to 'progress': a parallel progress or 'development' seemed necessary and possible in the political sphere. Development was indeed regarded as a comprehensive process which should not be divided into compartments: improvements in one aspect of the society - political, social, or economic - depended on improvements in all the others. There was also much ground for pessimism. There was war and destruction in many parts of the globe, if not in Europe;

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there were ruthless dictatorships in Eastern Europe and in many of the new countries about which there had been great hopes. Even when many dictatorships fell at the end of the 1980s, wars erupted in some cases in their place. It seemed to be a Hobson's choice between an iron grip and a brutal 'state of nature'; was Hobbes in fact right? Thus the question whether there is political progress can seriously be raised. Is there simply see-sawing, periods of 'good government' alternating with periods of 'bad government'? This is the obviously the main problem. There is another, however: as the matter of progress or 'development' was beginning to be studied by large numbers of social and political scientists, these discovered that at least political development was difficult to circumscribe and to define. Was political progress democracy or national independence? What if there was independence and no democracy? One author, L.W. Pye, indeed found no less than ten different bases for political development, ranging from mass mobilisation to the operation of the State and from the politics of industrial societies to stable and orderly change; although he then proceeded to look for a comprehensive 'syndrome' in order to bring these approaches under a common umbrella, it was rather worrying for the intellectual solidity of the concept that there should be so many views about what it meant (Pye, 1966, 31-48). Hence a major contradiction: everyone wished to improve society, including its political aspects, but no one seemed to be able to agree on what 'improving politics' could entail. Pessimism might then have to return, both because there might be little progress or none at all and because we have to say that we do not know what political progress might mean, although the man in the street would find it incomprehensible that we should have to leave the matter unsolved in this way. Indeed, it seems that, on some matters at least, the answer is straightforward: is it not better to have the United Nations than not to have that organisation? Is it not better at least to dream of improving human rights than not to do so? Could it not even be argued that there is political progress in the sheer

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fact that we do regard a better respect for human rights a goal to strive towards? Before stating that we are at an impasse, however, we need surely to examine this 'impasse' somewhat more closely. To do so, we need to make a rather long detour before returning to the substance of progress. We need first to identify the points which raise controversy or lead to differences in approach: we will see that these points are related both to questions of political values and to questions of political and administrative arrangements. We will therefore then look successively at the relationship between these arrangements and political progress and at the way in which questions of political values markedly complicate the analysis. We will then ask whether in the end there is at least a partial answer to the fundamental question: is political progress a reality or an illusion?

I. Why it is difficult to circumscribe the concept of political progress 1. The idea of political progress or development fundamentally subjective

seems

By political progress or development we mean change in a 'positive' direction. Change can be described, although there may be problems about its measurement; what causes difficulty is the assessment of what is 'positive' or 'negative' change, as such an assessment depends on having previously determined what makes 'good polities'. The difficulty starts at this point: it is not that each one of us does not know what 'good politics' is; it is that it seems impossible to find a definition to which all will agree. The appreciation whether a political system or regime is good or not and whether a change is an improvement or not is a value judgement: what is good for one may not be good for another. Witness the current controversies over muslim fundamentalism: what is good on the North-

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ern side of the Mediterranean may not be good on the Southern side. Must of us tend to think that liberal democracy is a 'good thing' but many did not think so in the past and many still do not think so. This explains why political theorists have searched and continue to search for the 'good society'. Every theorist is entitled to renew the search without being bound by the conclusions of others. If this is the case, should one simply refuse to give a general definition of political development? This is impractical, however, since society exists and political activity takes place in the society. As we said, the man in the street assumes that we have a view and is angry with us if we cannot guide him. Whether we can define political development or not, society will have to do it: there will be goals and there will be images of what constitutes good politics. There is thus an 'existential' need for an operational definition of political progress or development, a definition valid at least for the immediate future and for a given society. Political theorists are not just entitled to continue to search for a solution: they have to do so, because society needs to have some practical notion of what political 'progress' entails. Let us therefore see, following Pye, what kinds of definitions have been given of political development and whether we can at least discover some relatively firm elements. These definitions fall into three groups. The first relates political development to social and economic development by suggesting that political development is concerned with the politics of industrial societies or with a 'multidimensional process of social change'; a second group is concerned with what might be called the organisation of the political system by referring to nation-building and to administrative structures; the third links development to political values, such as mass mobilisation, the relationship between mobilisation and power, and the movement towards democracy (Pye, 1966: 45-8).

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2. Political development

and socio-economic

development

Definitions of the first group, which relate political development to social and economic development, are simple, but seem rather unrewarding. They assume that we know what social and economic development is: in the 1960s and the early 1970s at least, social scientists believed that they did, they even thought that few measurement problems existed, as economic development could be assessed by such means as levels and distributions of incomes and extent of industrialisation, while social development could be traced through levels of educational and social services, all of which seemed eminently measurable and were indeed measured by many U N agencies engaged in collecting and publishing the relevant data. On the other hand, political development was obviously more difficult to grasp per se: it was not clear what data would have to be collected. However, as politics is the process by which collective decisions are taken and collective policies are made, it seemed justifiable to assess the 'worth' of politics by looking at these decisions and policies. This meant looking primarily at economic and social policies. It would seem to follow that there was political development where one could trace the existence of economic and social development. Yet such an approach is insufficient and therefore unsatisfactory. It tells us about the outcomes, but it has nothing to say about the means. Much of politics is about means, however. For instance, we do not know whether these social and economic policies have been achieved by ruthless imposition or by agreement. Would not many say that there is political progress if agreement is preferred to imposition? Moreover, we do not know whether the results are obtained efficiently, there may have been wasteful bureaucratic procedures and there may also have been corruption. Thus it is also impossible to discover by such a method the political conditions which could favour economic and social progress. Political progress, if it exists, has to be studied directly.

Political Progress: Reality or Illusion?

3. Political progress as the organisation

of the political

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system

Yet, as soon as we wish to do so, we find ourselves confronted with two profoundly different routes to follow. One of these routes consists in looking at efficiency and to begin with at the efficiency of the State machinery. It seems at least prima facie reasonable to look in this direction as 'progress' in society is likely to depend on 'progress' in the administrative sphere. Admittedly, it is difficult to describe, let alone quantify, bureaucratic efficiency, but it seems at least possible to begin to do so. However, if we move in this direction, we should not consider just the bureaucracy. Political decision-making results from activities taking place within many types of political institutions, such as groups, parties, parliaments, executives, alongside bureaucracies. Inefficiency in any one of them should therefore result in lack of political development. One has therefore to enlarge the search and see political progress as relating to the way in which policies of all kinds are made, from the moment they are conceived to the moment in which they are fully implemented, in and by all types of institutions. By enlarging the inquiry in this way, we have become more realistic about assessing efficiency, but the practical problems of measurement become immense: we would have for instance to assess whether a political party was 'efficient' or not in promoting a given policy at a given point in time; this entails passing judgements on such matters as the extent to which the population is 'ripe' for the policy, whether it would 'cost' too much in terms of money and energy to undertake such a move, etc. Comparisons across countries may help to an extent; but the magnitude of the practical problem is obvious. Moreover, we also begin to move away from efficiency stricto sensu. While considering what groups, parties, parliaments, or executives do, we have to ask also why these institutions exist and how they interact. We have therefore to pass judgments on the general value of these institutions: we move from the realm of means to enter that of norms.

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4. Political development as the implementation political values

of

This is probably the reason why many students of political development have opted for another route, the one which takes into account values such as mobilisation and democracy. However, as we stated earlier, such definitions are based on subjective standpoints. While one observer may regard progress as related to democracy, another may claim that a less open society would lead to greater progress. We seem to have run full circle: relatively simple and down-to-earth approaches are relatively objective, but they apprehend one aspect of the problem only, on the other hand, more comprehensive approaches seem to depend entirely on the personal position of the observer. N o r does a 'syndrome' taking all these approaches together truly help, as the problem of value assessment is not resolved since values are one element of the analysis. A different solution has therefore to be found. If values play a major part in the determination of the good society, what must be explored is whether there may be some common ground below the subjectivity of norms and values. Meanwhile, it is also worth exploring the part which all political and administrative institutions (and not merely bureaucracies) play in rendering more efficient the processes of decision- and policy-making. After having established how far we can go by examining the part played by institutions in enabling societies to progress politically, we will need to return to values and see whether we can at least partly overcome the problem of individual subjectivity.

II. Political progress measured by the capacity and efficiency of political institutions Political progress unquestionably depends, in part at least, on the capacity and efficiency of political institutions; but, while

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we think we k n o w what we mean when we refer to a particular institution's being efficient, there are severe problems of measurement. There are indeed two broad sets of problems. First, we have to see whether we can discover criteria enabling us to decide what makes each structure efficient, second, we have to discover means of determining the efficiency of all the institutions taken together.

1. What makes a structure efficient ? There is no simple way of describing, let alone measuring institutional efficiency. O n e obviously important factor is constituted by the degree of 'institutionalisation'. Institutions would seem to be more efficient if they operate more smoothly, if there are fewer difficulties about the procedures on the basis of which they are run, and if these procedures are clear. The concept of institutionalisation attempts to summarise these points: it has been defined by Huntington as "the process by which organisations and procedures acquire value and stability" (Huntington, 1968; 12). In the detailed analysis which he then conducts, Huntington discovers four dimensions along which institutions can be located and which can help to determine their degree of institutionalisation. Institutions have to be assessed, he states, by the extent to which they are 'adaptable' rather than 'rigid', 'complex' rather than 'simple', 'autonomous' rather than 'subordinated', and 'coherent' rather than 'disunited' (Huntington, 1968; 13-24). It is arguable as to whether one should conclude, following Huntington, that the highest possible degree of institutionalisation is always to be found at the polar extremes of these four dimensions. There may be a trade-off between the four variables: 'adaptability' may affect the degree of 'coherence', it is probably better to have some 'disunity' if this means a lower level of 'rigidity'. However, to the extent that the analysis applies to each institution, it provides guidelines which are both theoretically rewarding and practically useful. O n e can at least

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obtain, with respect to of each institution, an impression of what constitutes 'progress' or 'development'. At this stage at least, this is not more than an impression: precise measurement is out of the question; but we may be able to say, with respect to a given institution, that there is, or is not, 'progress'.

2. Efficiency at the level of the whole political system: differentiation and autonomy We must assess progress across the whole political system, however. This is a markedly more difficult task. It cannot be achieved merely by summing, so to speak, the results obtained for the different institutions which compose the political system, an operation which would of course be extremely long if it were possible. Yet, even if it were possible, it would not be

satisfactory. A high level of institutionalisation of each institution may not result in the whole political system's being efficient. For instance, interests groups may be so numerous and so well-developed that the system cannot cope (a situation which has sometimes been described as one of political overload) (Rose, 1980). Admittedly, this means that the parties, the parliament, the government, or the bureaucracy are not then truly adapted to each other; but such a conclusion entails that we look at the 'relative progress' of all the political institutions jointly and in particular at the interconnections among these institutions. Such a task is obviously difficult, so difficult indeed that it seems unrealistic to hope for an assessment of what political progress consists of in practice by going along this route. Two criteria have been suggested, admittedly: they are constituted by the level of differentiation and the extent of autonomy of institutions (Almond and Powell, 1966: 306-14). In this view, the efficiency of the whole system is considered to be positively related to these two characteristics. The first of these bears some similarity with the idea of the division of labour which, since Durkheim, has been regarded as a characteristic

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of 'advanced' societies (Durkheim, 1953: 39-49); empirical evidence indeed suggests that there is greater differentiation of institutions and groups in the societies which are less traditional. The second criterion is related to one of the dimensions mentioned by Huntington since he views 'autonomy' as evidence of institutionalisation, as we saw (Huntington, 1968: 12). It seems permissible to claim that, where there are a large number of autonomous structures, there is at least potential for greater political development.

3. Do the differentiation and the autonomy of institutions constitute indicators of efficiency and therefore of progress While these criteria appear intuitively to be broadly related to the efficiency of the political system, they are far from being truly satisfactory. It is clearly not axiomatic that the relationship between them and political progress is linear. A vast number of highly differentiated and autonomous institutions may not render the system necessarily more efficient than a smaller number of institutions incorporating within themselves a variety of standpoints and approaches. For instance, in some countries, parties and interest groups are quite independent of each other: this is the case in particular in the United States. In other countries, Socialist and Christian parties are related to a series of groups, such as trade unions, cooperatives, etc. It is not clear that the first type of arrangement necessarily constitutes 'progress' by comparison with the second. If the relationship between differentiation and autonomy, on the one hand, and the overall efficiency of the political system, on the other, is not linear, then we do have to determine what this relationship is, whether it is bell- or U-shaped, for instance. Consider the question of decentralisation: what is typically suggested is not that that maximum efficiency is achieved where there is 'total' decentralisation (which must mean the total absence of linkage) but at some intermediate position between the two extremes. We believe generally that

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the relationship between the efficiency of an institution and decentralisation is therefore bell-shaped. Something along these lines might be hypothesised about the whole political system, from which it would follow that, once we take all the institutions together, the shape of the curve is likely to be highly complex. However, if we cannot prove that there is a linear relationship between institutional differentiation and autonomy, on the one hand, and the efficiency of the political system, on the other, (indeed if we have some reasons to doubt that the relationship is linear), we simply cannot postulate that these two criteria lead necessarily to political progress. We have therefore to stop at this point and wait until empirical evidence provides at least an element of proof. Some have preferred not to wait, however: they seem to have held the view that a linear relationship does exist, as if the autonomy of institutions, a situation which is typically translated in terms of the 'pluralism' of the society, was axiomatically a 'good thing': on this basis liberal democratic regimes would necessarily constitute progress compared to other regimes. A statement of this kind takes us away from the realm of the analysis of institutional efficiency and brings us into the realm of preferences, however: we have moved to asserting our values. If we are to suggest that Western liberal democracies are the most politically developed polities, it is more honest to state this openly - and recognise that this statement is based on a value judgment - than to claim that the developed character of these political systems stems from 'objective' characteristics of the configuration of institutions (Chilcote, 1981: 178-82).

III. From the analysis of institutions to the analysis of values It is therefore better at this point to turn to the examination of the role of values in determining what is political progress. Institutions alone cannot provide the basis for a satisfactory definition, even if their capacity and their efficiency forms part of

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that definition. Yet if we turn to values, however, we seem to have to conclude that there cannot be a single conception of political progress to which all will agree: there will be many views as to what these goals of the polity may be. Thus it is not permissible to state that political development is 'mass mobilisation and participation' or 'the building of democracy', or even 'stability and orderly change' as some have suggested according to Pye's analysis (Pye, 1966: 39-42); nor is it permissible to state categorically that the political development 'syndrome' includes the striving towards 'equality', as Pye suggests (Pye, 1966: 45-6). We are here in the realm of values and it is unwarranted to claim that these values are the values which all have to recognise as characterising a 'good' society (Jackson and Stein, 1971: 32-4).

1. The value-laden character of the concept of political development or progress In the 1960s, many political scientists writing about political development were satisfied with the view that liberal democracies were superior, that they constituted political progress. In the 1970s, this idea was strongly challenged and many theorists came to the conclusion that each society, each individual even, can have a different conception of the 'good' society and that the concept of political progress could not be other than subjective. New development theories emerged which suggested that the alleged superiority of liberal democracies was the product of the exploitation of the Third World by the West; the 'progress' achieved by liberal democracies was obtained by maintaining other parts of the world in a form of economic dependency. To this was to be added an ideological dependency by which non-Western States were subjected to the repeated claim that the Western model of government was politically superior (Wallerstein, 1979; Chilcote, 1981: 296-312).

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This view connected political development closely to economic power. Indeed, supporters of Western liberal democracies sometimes came to the same conclusion, since they typically claimed and gave empirical data to support this claim that liberal democracy flourished primarily where living standards were high (Lipset, 1983 ed.: 31-45; Cutright, 1963: 569-82). Economic and social development seemed to be the key element, political development was merely a 'superstructure', an inevitable consequence. Yet, in reality, 'developmentalists' faced serious difficulties with this interpretation of society, for they needed to establish the primacy of political development if they were to break the vicious circle in which they saw Third World societies imprisoned. The way out, somewhat illogically, consisted in emphasising the value basis of development, as if, despite the primacy of the economic 'substructure', societies could none the less decide on the basis of which political norms they were to be organised.

2. The concept of socio-economic development or progress is also value-laden, but there is often agreement on socio-economic goals. Such an approach clearly reinforced the view that there could not be agreement on what constitutes political development and that one's assessment in the matter depended entirely on one's ideological preferences. Yet it is questionable as to whether this conclusion is truly warranted. To begin with, it is worth examining the apparent contrast between the characteristics of the concept of social and economic progress and those of the concept of political progress. O n the surface, while the concept of political progress appears based on subjective standpoints, the concept of social and economic development does not seem to raise the same fundamental difficulties and even appears rather uncontentious. Is it, then, that economic and social development is not based on

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value judgements? This is not the case; economic and social progress may be more easily measurable, in some of its aspects, than political progress, but, like political progress, it is based on values. For instance, it is neither axiomatic nor logically demonstrable that higher incomes per capita are 'progress', let alone that industrialisation or the use of sophisticated machinery are 'progress', nor is it even axiomatic that more education or more social services are 'progress'. These questions are not only debatable, they are indeed debated; they were often hotly debated in the past and some of them have come to be discussed, in a renewed manner, since the 1970s and 1980s, as a result both of the increased strength of 'environmentalist ideas' and of the spread of conservative views about the State and the individual. The development of 'green' movements and parties since the 1970s, especially in Western liberal democracies, has led to a strong questioning of the worth of economic and even conventional social development. The idea of 'rolling back the State' which characterised also the policies of a number of Western liberal democracies, such as Britain and the United States, had also the effect of leading to a questioning of the worth of conventional economic and social progress. These points are debated because they are based on value judgments as is participation or equality in the context of political progress. If the concepts of economic and social progress depend on value judgements about the 'good' society, why do these concepts not encounter the same difficulties as the concept of political progress? There are two reasons for the difference. The first is somewhat peripheral but it nonetheless plays some part: because economic and social development is more easily measurable in many of its aspects, there is in practice less scope for argument as to what, from a concrete point of view, might constitute progress. As a matter of fact, even the question of the measurement of economic and social development has tended to be raised increasingly. The comparison of the per capita G N P of diverse countries, for instance, is recognised to be highly controversial. Yet, as countries can be ranked in

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terms of incomes per capita or of educational attainment while it is not possible to do so with respect to the level of institutionalisation of parties or parliaments, the concept of economic and social progress appears more objective. Second, the values underlying of economic and social development, though theoretically debatable, are debated to a limited extent only, there is a higher degree of agreement on socio-economic values than on political values. Few believe, let alone state (at any rate at present) that society should not educate its members or take care of the health of its citizens; few believe or state that levels of incomes among the mass of the population should be low. Meanwhile, many believe and indeed state that levels of political participation should not be high and that freedoms should be restricted. As a matter of fact, it is so manifest that there is a debate on social and economic issues that political systems can be distinguished and are indeed distinguished according to their substantive goals: some countries adopt conservative policies, others pursue progressive policies. Yet, alongside these distinctions, there is also broad agreement about a number of 'basic' social and economic values. There is disagreement on levels of equality with respect to property distribution and indeed income distribution admittedly, but aspects of social life, such as those relating to health and to an extent education, as well as (though to a lesser extent) some aspects of economic life, such as the increased use of mechanical power instead of human physical force, are broadly accepted.

3. An intersubjective

approach to political

development

The point here is not to assess to what extent there is a debate about which values underlie the idea of economic and social progress. It is to point out that a lower or narrower amount of disagreement with respect to these values does not stem from a difference in kind with the concept of political progress, but merely from a difference of degree. It is not that economic and

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social development can be defined in an objective manner while political development must depend on subjective assessment. all aspects of development are based on subjective assessments. What makes economic and social development apparently easier to handle is that the level of intersubjective agreement is appreciably higher - at least ostensibly (Turner, 1986: 188; 328). Given that the determination of what constitutes progress depends on a high level of consensus, on shared beliefs, on intersubjective agreement, and not on the recognition of an objective reality, it becomes important to examine whether, as in the case of economic and social development, a broad intersubjective base can be found for the concept of political progress as well. The aim is not to discover a 'syndrome' in which the institutional aspects would, so to speak, reduce the part played by values in the idea of political progress; it is to see whether some values are sufficiently broadly held in the political sphere to form a basis for an intersubjective approach to the concept. It is manifestly impossible to discover such values at the level of ideological standpoints which are widely adopted in specific regimes, such as equality, democracy, or 'orderly change' (Pye, 1966: 29-48). These concepts are the object of too many public and private debates. There are, on the other hand, some deeper characteristics of politics which might appear to the large majority - if not all - as 'positive'. Hobbes stated a characteristic which seems of this type, the right to defend one's life (Hobbes, 1651; Pt I, Ch 14). Could one not go somewhat further, by being positive rather than negative and, building on Hobbes' premise, consider as 'inalienable' and universally 'valuable' the right to strive, the right to achieve, a view which is perhaps not too far from the right to 'happiness'?

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4. Political development as the 'expansion of choice opportunities ' Politics is about collective decision-making and policy making. Policy-making implies choosing among all possible policies, there have to be mechanisms limiting the number of choices, in terms of goods, services, as well as values, which the society can process at a given moment. Does it not therefore follow that improvement, development, progress would consist in increasing the number and the quality of the choices which are made in the society? If human beings have a right to achieve and at least to strive, this surely means that a better society is one in which all human beings are better able to achieve and at least to strive; this means that a better society is one in which decision-making and policy-making open up broader choices to the members of the society. This conception of development or progress is the one which D.E. Apter proposes in his Choice and the Politics of Allocation when he states that development is the "expansion of choice opportunities," a notion which pertains particularly to politics (Apter, 1973: 6). Such an approach is in the realm of values, but it is almost certainly a value which can be regarded as intersubjective since it is likely to carry broad agreement. This does .not mean that there cannot be conflicts about the concrete manifestations of these 'choice opportunities', nor is it claimed that the view that political progress is related to the expansion of choice opportunities is universally accepted, especially if we consider the matter historically, but this approach is likely to produce a sounder basis for intersubjective agreement and thus reduce the oppositions which seemed at one point to make it impossible even to discuss political development.

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IV. Is there or isn't there political progress? We can now return to the substantive question: is there political progress? If so, has there been, in the contemporary world, a trend towards political progress? We stated at the beginning of this paper that there were two extreme views, corresponding to different moments during the last 200 years: the optimistic view suggested that there was political progress while the pessimistic view saw at most a see-sawing, periods of regress being as long and as deep as periods of progress. Indeed, for the pessimists, regress can and does take place on the social and economic plane as well: there may be more education, but this education may be used for purposes which are 'nasty, brutish, and short'; there may be more economic facilities, but this is at the expense of polluting the atmosphere and slowly disintegrating the planet. If we limit ourselves to the question of political progress, three remarks can be made. These help to provide some elements towards a solution of the debate, although they are still tentative and do not provide means, as yet at least, of measuring and even assessing precisely the extent to which there is or has been political progress.

1. Political progress and the efficiency of the political

system

The first remark concerns the efficiency aspect of political progress, that is to say the extent to which political institutions can be improved and are in effect improved. It seems justified to advance the view that there has been some progress in this respect, but only recently and in a way which is far from uniform. The reason that there is progress may indeed be due in part to the very awareness of the need for efficiency in some at least of the institutions which compose the political system. Evaluation of policymaking and implementing has become an important activity, at least in Western countries: while much of the work on evaluation probably does not have much impact,

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at any rate as yet, some work probably does. Competition and imitation also probably play a large and positive part in this process. Admittedly, this evaluation is typically at the level of each institution and in particular at that of the bureaucracy and not globally at the level of the political system as a whole. As was noted earlier, progress at the global level is difficult to achieve (and to assess) since what is needed is a systematic coordination of efforts, a condition unlikely to be frequently fulfilled, if at all, especially in a democratic society. However, there is awareness of the global problem. The views expressed by observers gradually spread slowly among parts of the public. In this respect, policy studies are most valuable as they analyse the decision-making process in a comprehensive manner and thus help to determine whether there is overall inefficiency when various institutions work in opposite directions, not just as a result of a deliberate stand, as may be expected in a democracy, but unwittingly as well. It is perhaps too early to say whether progress is taking place at the global level, but it is possible to examine specific processes, and conclusions may be drawn about these. Indeed, one might even make progress occur in this way, would it only be because most are likely to wish to get rid of inefficiencies at least if there are no costs involved in doing so.

2. Political progress and the expansion of the opening of societies

opportunities:

Political progress, as we saw, can be assessed by reference to the expansion of choice opportunities, this expression is sufficiently broad to provide a basis for intersubjective agreements. Yet this expression can also provide general guidance as to the direction in which political values should be going if there is to be political progress. This direction must surely be that of an opening of political societies.

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In the contemporary world, and indeed throughout the century, there has probably be some progress in this direction, even if there have also been upsets. The movement towards an opening of societies has generally been upward, despite the fact that there have been some 'downs'. These 'downs' were particularly marked between 1914 and 1945. What makes it reasonable to suggest that there is some political progress is the fact that this gradual opening of societies has taken place successively on a number of fronts. First, many societies became open to the 'working classes' and their representatives,they then became increasingly open to women and have also begun to be open to minority groups. There has also been an opening to the 'South' of the world, not only as a result of the end of colonialism, but also because at least some of the elites of these countries take part in processes of discussion on world affairs. Such an opening is social as well as political. The participation of women or of minorities in political systems which previously did not give them much if any voice is in part the consequence of these groups' being socially more involved and being regarded as equal on social as well on political terms. This is an instance of the point which was made earlier and according to which it is not truly possible to divide 'development' into a number of wholly separate segments. Clearly, the opening of societies has ramifications at all levels and in all aspects. There is therefore, globally, progress in this respect even if it is neither uniform nor truly universal.

3. Political progress and the stress on negotiation Political progress apears to take place in another way, namely in that, by and large, emphasis is being placed increasingly on negotiation rather than imposition. If one looks broadly at the history of human relations in the course of the twentieth century, despite the hiatusses and in particular despite the hiatus of the 1914-45 period, the idea that solutions to political prob-

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lems should be obtained by negotiation has markedly gained ground. This must be regarded as political progress. One can notice this development, first, at the national level. In many countries, at least in the West, the idea of 'consociationalism' has made its mark. There has been opposition to this idea: it has been attacked on the grounds that it led to stagnation and even corruption. Perhaps it should not be pushed to extremes and perhaps some form of 'adversary' politics has its value, but, even within the context of adversary politics, it is generally recognised that it is good for a country that there should be matters on which all agree, not merely in terms of procedures, but in terms of substance. Traditionally, one field in which consensus has been expected to prevail has been foreign affairs, surely, it is political progress that this view should prevail. The fact that the main political parties should come to an agreement on these issues, and possibly about others as well, must be regarded as a sign that, in some polities at least, there is political progress. One can also note developments at the international level, despite wars and other forms of conflict. As was pointed out at the outset, many would regard the very existence of the United Nations as progress; it is progress compared to the League of Nations, and the League of Nations was progress over having nothing at all. There is also political progress as a result of the development of 'supranational' or regional organisations grouping a number of countries coming together not so much or even not at all in order to fight other countries but in order to organise better relations among themselves. Indeed, even military alliances such as NATO have fostered arrangements going beyond military matters. There are still many wars, the 1990s have had perhaps more than their fair share of them. Yet the 1990s have also seen the beginning of international intervention in order to prevent civil wars and to stop confrontations between communal groups within nations. This has to be regarded as political progress since the purpose is to attempt to expand choice opportunities for each human group. One cannot quantify the extent

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of this progress admittedly; but some progress is occurring. Furthermore, it seems that, in the process, there may be greater reflection on and some deepening of intersubjective views about what political progress might signify. It would of course be pleasant to be able to assess the extent to which there is political progress in our societies. Many would like to be able to say that we are indeed improving, if not continuously and regularly, at any rate over the long period, the way we take our collective decisions; indeed, even if the world is not improving in this respect, we would certainly wish to be able to state what direction the world should take in order to improve political life. This does not seem possible, however. To begin with, the concept of political progress itself raises such problems that we do not really know what constitutes political progress. These difficulties are unavoidable, because political progress is related to political values and these are intrinsically contentious and indeed contested. Yet, as the analysis of the concept proceeds, some scope seems to emerge for a clarification and perhaps a narrowing of the disagreements. Moreover, we discover that all aspects of 'development', social and economic, as well as political, have objective and subjective components which are linked and even intertwined. Political progress can to an extent be assessed objectively through an examination of the efficiency and the capacity of political institutions and in particular through the determination of the degree of institutionalisation of these bodies. This is a difficult task: operationalisation is a distant goal. The problems posed by the determination of the values which are at the root of the idea of political progress are at least as severe: but they do not seem unsurmountable either; if they are directly confronted, the danger of a wholly subjective assessment recedes and we can come to a clearer understanding of the direction of change in modern societies. If we take into account both institutional efficiency and an intersubjective vision of the 'good' society, we are able to determine more firmly than before what the contours of political

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progress can be in the contemporary world. If, with these instruments, however rough, we then look at the world around us, we seem entitled to conclude that some political progress has been and is taking place. By proceeding in this careful manner, we therefore discover that we have some ground for suggesting that, in the contemporary world, there are some sparks which suggest that political progress may be, in part at least, reality. Short bibliography The number of studies on social, economic,and political development are legion. So are those on political development. For a recent presentation, see J.C. Alexander and P. Sztompka, eds., Rethinking Progress (1990), Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman. For a general presentation of the evolution of thinking on political development, see my Discipline of Politics (1981), pp. 90-102, London: Butterworth. A more detailed examination can be found in R.H. Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics (1981), pp. 271-346, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. The most straightforward description of the problems posed by political development can be found in L.W. Pye, Aspects of Political Development (1966), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co. Two other general analyses of the problem are those of J.L. Finkle and R.W. Gable, (eds.), Political Development and Social Change (1966), New York, N.Y.: Wiley and of R.J. Jackson and M.B. Stein, (eds.), Issues in Comparative Politics (1971), St Martin's Press. On the question of 'overload' see R. Rose, (ed.), Challenge to Governance: Studies in Overloaded Polities (1980) London and Los Angeles: Sage. There is a large literature on the relationship between social and economic development, on the one hand, and political development, on the other. Two earlier and pioneering studies only are mentioned here, those of S.M. Lipset in Political Man (1960, new ed. 1983) London: Heinemann, at pp. 31-45 and of

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P. Cutright on 'National Political Development' which can be found in N.W. Polsby et al. (eds.), Politics and Social Life (1963) Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, at pp. 569-82. Analyses of specific aspects of the problem of political development can be found in S.P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, especially in the early chapters. The concept of capability has been elaborated and developed in G.A. Almond and G.B. Powell in Comparative Politics (1966), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co, especially towards the end of the volume. On Dürkheims view of the division of labour, see The Division of Labour in Society (1933 ed.), New York, N.Y.: Free Press. On the notion of intersubjective agreement, see in particular P.L. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality (1966), New York, N.Y.: Praeger and J.H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory (1986). For a presentation of what a more intersubjective concept of political development see D.E. Apter, Choice and the Politics of Allocation (1973), in particular the early Chapters. See also R. Falk et al. (eds.), Toward a Just World Order (1982), Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Nicholas Rescher

Progress and the Future

Once and Future Progress Progress is not just a matter of change but of change in a direction of betterment of some sort, not of change per se but of improvement. Progress accordingly has two dimensions: retrospective (how far we have come) and prospective (where we have yet to go). The idea of a progress in general has a crucial future dimension. But where do we stand vis-à-vis the future?

2. Problems of Predictability What Virgil said of the after-life - that it is "the land from which no one returns" (illuc unde negant redire quemquam) seems to be true of the future as well; there are none among us who have actually been there. But in this regard the actual future differs crucially from the contemplated future. For we can certainly return to the present from the future as we envision it with the mind's eye, and act either to make its actualization more certain or else - where we do not like what we see - to try to avert its realization. Knowing, evaluating, and doing - our involvement with knowledge, value, and action - are three principal spheres of human endeavor. And, correspondingly, our prime concerns with the future relate to its predictability, its welcomability and its tractability. At the level of generality, the main aspects of

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the future into which we would like to have deeper insight are three: (i) To what extent is the future knowable? H o w large is the scope of feasible predictive foreknowledge? (Predictability) (ii) To what extent does the future bode good or ill? What does it portend for our human interests and concerns? (Welcomability) (iii) To what extent can we humans shape the future? H o w far does it lie within our power to control or influence the shape of things to come? (Tractability) These factors represent the major issues over which theoreticians have quarreled and controverted in their doctrinal disagreements regarding the future. Let us consider each of them somewhat more closely, beginning with the first. This world of ours is a mixed bag as regards prediction some things we can foresee, but many not. The circumstance which - above all - renders detailed knowledge of the future infeasible pivots on the distinction between the particular and the general. For in this world, particular things - be they people or planets - have a finite lifespan and the issue of their successes is subject to the operation of chance and contingency. Accordingly, our claims about the particulars of the distant future have to be made in a generic and hypothetical way: "If my grandchildren have grandchildren they will carry some of my genes," "Whoever is elected president of the U.S. in 2400 will be over 20 years old," and the like. The fact that the make-up of the distant future pivots on contingencies (Will the USA still exist as such in 2400? Will I have grandchildren who themselves will have grandchildren?) means that our validatable claims about the condition of things at this time will have to be made under assumptions and cannot be made in a detailed and categorical way. For this reason, our knowledge of the more distant future in which even fewer of the particular and concrete individuals we know of continue to survive grows ever more vague and indefinite.

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And so, perhaps the most pervasive and portentous theme of the theory of prediction is that of limits. For we are faced with limits to the prospects of prediction that have the most far-reaching consequences. Above all, since truth is adequate to reality (adaequatio ad rem), it lies in the nature of things that we shall never know the whole truth because we cannot get to the whole future because this section of reality lies outside our cognitive reach. Is this a bad thing? The diurnal activity schedule of a crow, a termite, or a sheep is in large measure predictable; such lifestyles leave effectively no room for discretionary choice. When such an animal is born we can say precisely what it will be doing halfway through its lifespan. But not so for a member of homo sapiens. Intelligence liberates us from the iron shackles of biological determination and creates room for differential responses to the vagaries of chance and choice. And as an instrument that enables us to deal with impredictability when and where it arises, intelligence actually requires the challenges afforded by (a manageable degree of) impredictability as a structure essential to its adequate development and effective maintenance. 1 From our point of view, impredictability - though a shortcoming - is no perhaps unalloyed negativity - since in many ways, and perhaps on all of the most important one, we are just as well off not knowing what the future has in store for us.

3. The Problem of Tractability Prediction is one thing; control another. Let us now turn to the issue of the future's tractability. From the very start of the species, much human effort has regularly been expended on the devising of practices, systems, and institutions to make the future more tractable. O u r early

It is not the least of the merits of the fine arts that they enable us to satisfy this requirement.

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shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from nomad to settler was clearly all designed to reduce the extent of risk and uncertainty in our effort to make it possible to meet our needs and achieve our ends with greater assurance. And, over the milennia, an immense amount of human thought and effort has been expended in this direction. In particular, the issue of "control over nature" lies at the core of the scientific enterprise. And it is clear that this matter of control has far more complexity than appears on first view. For just how is this conception to be understood? Clearly, control consists in bending the course of events to our will, of attaining our ends within nature. But this involvement of "our ends" brings to light the prominence of the rogue factor of our own contribution. For example, if we are inordinately modest in our demands (or very unimaginative), we may even achieve "complete control over nature" in the sense of being in a position to do whatever we want to do, but yet attain this happy condition in a way that betokens very little real capability. Power is a matter of the "effecting of things possible" - of achieving control - and it is clearly science which, in teaching us about the limits of the possible, is itself the agent that must shape our conception of this issue. We cannot ask for the production of a perpetuum mobile for spaceships with "hyperdrive" enabling them to attain transluminal velocities, for devices that predict essentially stochastic processes such as the disintegrations of transuranic atoms, or for piston devices that enable us to set independently the values for the pressure, temperature, and the volume of a body of gas. We cannot, in sum, ask of a "perfected" technology that it should enable us to do anything whatever that we might take it into our heads to do, no matter how "unrealistic" this might be. Every law of nature serves to set the boundary between what is genuinely possible and what is not, between what can be done and what cannot, between which questions we can properly ask and which we cannot. Our science alone can inform us about what is indeed possible. And science, ever changing, brings new possibilities to light. (At a suitable stage, the idea of "splitting the atom"

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will no longer seem a contradiction in terms.) To see if a given state of technology meets the condition of perfection, we must already have a body of perfected science in hand to tell us what is indeed possible. To validate the claim that our technology of control is perfected, we would need to preestablish the completeness of our science so as the establish the ultimate correctness of our vision of the sphere of the possible. The idea works in such a way that claims to perfected control can rest only on perfected science - something we clearly could not hope to obtain. 2 Accordingly, the project of achieving the practical mastery of "doing whatever we want" can never be perfected in a satisfactory way. For this clearly hinges on what we want, and what we want is conditioned by what we think possible, and this is something that hinges crucially on theory - on our (unavoidably imperfect) beliefs about how things work in this world. The very idea of perfecting control is something deeply problematic. We can never safely move from apparent to real adequacy in this regard; we cannot adequately assure that seeming perfection is more than just that. Realizing, then, that the extent of our control over the world's eventuations is going to have to be limited, exactly how much can we hope for in this regard? Three main positions have emerged in discussions regarding the future's tractability: intractability theories, manipulability theories, and mixed theories. The classic version of intractability theory is based on the idea of synoptic predetermination. It holds that the shape of the future is pre-ordained: world-history is preprogrammed from the very outset - be it through necessitarian scientific law (as with Laplace), or the ordinances of a controlling deity, or through the inexorable decrees of fate, destiny, or "the stars" (as with traditional astrology). The die is cast; our future is already settled - and there is nothing further

2

O n these issues see the author's The Limits of Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).

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to be done about it. What is to be is and ever has been unalterably pre-determined to be, and that's that. O n such a view, people are not masters of their fate and shapers of the eventuations that transpire on the world's stage; the most we can manage is to do willingly whatever it is that has been preordained - volentem facta ducunt, nolentem trahunt. willynilly things must go on their inevitable way, and we along with them. We can align our thoughts with the world's course of events, but cannot alter it. This in effect was the doctrine of ancient Stoicism, and the position of Spinoza in the 17th century was not far removed from it. Intractability theorists stand at the opposite end of the spectrum. They regard nature's operations as largely contingent and wide-open to human intervention. Within broad limits it lies within the scope of human power to shape the course of events - to align the future's state of things with our own wishes and desires. This sort of view has been particularly prominent in times of technological optimism - in the Renaissance of Leonardo, the Enlightenment of the Encyclopedists, and the era of technological confidence prevalent in the U.S.A. immediately following World War II. Finally, there is an intermediate position that views control as a mixed bag. Admitting that an element of unforeseeability pervades all human affairs,3 Renaissance humanists often inclined to the optimistic view that rational endeavour can prevail against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For example, the Italian scholar Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), in his tracts De miseria humanae conditionis and De varietate fortunae, championed the efficacy of rational virtue: "The strength of fortune is never so great that it will not be overcome by men who are steadfast and resolute." 4 As he saw it,

3

4

Nam rerum humanorum tanta est obscuritas varietasque, ut nihil dilucide sciripossit. (Erasmus, Encomium Moraiae, XLV.) For an illuminating discussion see Antonino Poppi, "Fate and Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom" in C.B. Schmitt, et al. (eds.), The Cam-

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prudent action can control the future's developments. Others took a much less sanguine line. Thus Machiavelli, in Chapter 25 of II principe (1513) after surveying the cruelties and haphazards of the politics of his day, set more restrictive limits to human endeavour by assigning half of what happens in this domain to the intractable power of fortuna, though her rogue force might be partially tamed by prudently installed dikes and embankments. ( O n 20th-century indications, even this estimate looks rather too cosy.)

4. The Problem of Welcomability The portent of the future - its potential for good and bad turns on such evaluative questions as the following: H o w are we to assess the future's prospects? Are its developments to be welcomed or to be seen with apprehension? Is it with eager anticipation or with uneasy foreboding that we should face the future? To be sure, predictability lies at the base of such evaluation, since we cannot satisfactorily assess a future of whose descriptive outlines we have no reliable idea. Basically there are three major evaluative alternatives here, according as we take a positive, a negative, or a neutral or mixed view regarding the prospects for things to come. We can view the future's developments on the whole with optimism, with pessimism, or with neutrality. Optimism takes the encouraging line that all is well. Pessimism, by contrast, reflects the tenor of gloom-and-doom thinking: things are sliding downhill towards disaster - the world is "going to hell in a wheelbarrow." Neutralism reflects a mixed position, that looks to the future with ambivalent feelings and differentiated expectations as a mixed bag where some things are getting better and others worse in a complex and changeable mix.

bridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 641-67.

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Optimism takes a positive view of things. But this can assume very different specific forms, depending on whether it is maintained that the condition of things — is presently good order; or — is tending toward the good - that in the natural course of events, matters will ongoingly assume a better condition; or — is moveable toward the good - that matters can be impelled in this direction provided only that we do the right things to bring this about. Three different questions are at issue: how things currently are, whither they tend, and what opportunities are open. These three questions yield the corresponding positions of actuality optimism, tendency optimism, and prospect optimism, respectively. Actuality optimism takes the stance that things stand in good condition - that, on the whole, all is right with the world in the prevailing order of things. This idea was already voiced by Plato, who maintained that "Since he judged that order was in every way for the better, God brought it [the world] from disorder into order" (Timaeus, 30A). And, of course, such a view is not necessarily bound up with belief in the benevolence of a presiding deity - the good condition of things could be seen as the product of contingency or of good luck or simply as the result of "nature's way," the inexorable result of some aspect of the world's natural modus operandi. Tendency optimism, also called meliorism, is something very different from such an actuality optimism. It does not necessarily hold that all is well with the world as is, but takes the future-oriented stance that things are getting better. It compares the present with the relevant future and envisions an improvement in the confident conviction that, whatever might be happening now, better times lie ahead. (To be sure, since improvement as such is at issue, the alteration could in principle merely be a change from terrible to bad, rather than one from good to even better.)

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Prospect optimism compares the present as it stands with the possible future that our efforts and opportunities put at our disposal. It pivots on the tractability of things and looks to the presumably realizable future and maintains that suitable actions on our part can pave the way to improvement. It sees the issue in terms of the opportunities for our efforts to bring things to a better pass. (By contrast, the belief that things will deteriorate despite our best efforts to the contrary, represents a particularly gloomy version of pessimism.) Both meliorism (tendency optimism) and prospect optimism are oriented toward the future. But tendency optimism holds matters will get better of their own accord, while prospect optimism holds they can get better if only we do the right things. In the United States, the postwar era of 1945-60 saw something of a highwater mark of such prospect optimism. One heard loud and clear the siren call of a technological optimism based on the idea of the application of science for the solution of many or most of the pressing problems of human life on this planet (the medical conquest of disease, abundant and cheap power from nuclear reactors, etc.). Optimism and its congeners are indissolubly linked to the dimension of value. The positions at issue all take evaluative stances that contemplate some manner of goodness: — Actuality optimism: things are in good condition. — Tendency optimism (meliorism): things are moving toward the better. — Prospect optimism: things are moveable toward the better. The whole issue of portent is unavoidably evaluative. An evaluative sceptic - let alone an evaluative nihilist like Spinoza cannot take a position in this domain. Like all believers in progress, Hegel was an optimist. And the optimism of their master was shared alike by the Hegelian left and the Hegelian right, albeit in very different ways. On the left lay the tendency optimism represented by the eschatological posture of dialectical materialism - a melioristic view predicated on the historical inevitability of a better order of

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things (for the proletariat at any rate). And on the right lay the actuality optimism of the German idealists - a position that is not comparably eschatological and predictive, but represents an optimism of attitude and intellectual orientation rather than historical process - that the world has a prominent and secure place for the operation of positive values. Such a position is less predictive than attitudinal. Attitudes, however, differ with time and place. Historically Americans have generally - until quite recently at least - been optimistic, inclining to a tendency optimism that looks to an ongoingly better condition of life for one's children and their successors. (And historically they have had a great deal to be optimistic about.5 The situation has been more complex in Europe where a more mixed view of the matter has been common. Thus J.S. Mill envisioned a condition where people's standard of living settled into an equilibrium state but their spiritual and social condition continued to improve: It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved. 6

To be sure, optimism does not have it all its way. There are pessimists too, for whom, as Edmund Gosse put it, "The future comes as an unwelcome guest." Various people at various times thought they had seen the future and found it bad. And never was this view more pervasive than in the wake of the Black Death in the fourteenth century. The first attack of

5

See Robert L. Heilbroner, The Future as History (New York: Harper & Bros., 1960), pp. 2-3 et passim. He says of optimim that "as an enduring trait of national character it could almost be called exclusively American" (p. 17). But note also his assertion that: "it is fair to say that in the 1920s a degree of optimism never again realized marked the general business tone" (p. 135).

6

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications (Collected Works, vols. 3 and 4), p. 756.

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plague in the late 1340's carried off 50,000 in Paris - half the existing population. Grass grew in the streets and wolves attacked people in the depopulated suburbs. In enclosed places like monastaries, convents, and prisons, the death toll was often total. Throughout Europe, Froissart said, "a third of the world died" when the plague struck. With wars, famines, and brigandage contributing to the impact of the recurrent outbursts of plague, Europe lost half her population by the end of the century. Doomsday seemed to be at hand. " I n October of 1348, Philip V I of France asked the medical faculty of the University of Paris for a report on the affliction that seemed to threaten human survival. With careful thesis, antithesis, and proofs, the learned doctors ascribed it to a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius said to have occurred on March 20, 1345." 7 Many, thinking the Apocalypse to be in process of enactment, believed that the end of the world had come and that humanity's future was over. Many - but not everyone. For some discerned a ray of hope. If a bad conjunction of the stars caused the disaster, a good conjunction could undo the damage. Petrarch wrote: " O happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable." As individuals, people are inclined to be optimistic or pessimistic according as nature and nurture shape them - in line with their dispositions and the vicissitudes of their personal fates. But at the aggregate social level there are wide swings in the pendulum of predominance. The impetus of events and the drift of fashion makes for ongoing variation here. The recent environmentalism and the greening of public concern in industrialized nations is an example. The discovery of major threats to the human and biological environment the "greenhouse effect" of global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, acid rain, the destruction of the world's 7

Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), p. 103. Overall, the present paragraph draws from Chap. 5 of this book.

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forests, the contamination of the environment by pollution, atomic waste, hydrofluorocarbon production, decaying toxic wastes and the like - is a phenomenon of the past three decades. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) made the phenomenon prominent in the public consciousness in the U.S.A., doing for the environment what Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for slavery. Just as the post-war era of 1945-1965 was a time of technological optimism in the developed world when people looked forward to technological solutions to human problems, so the era from 1965 to the present has been an era of technological pessimism typified by the industrial disasters at Soweto, Bhopal, and Chernobyl. The resultant dismay has often found expression in the panicky tone of various environmentalist doomsayers whose prophesies are reminiscent of the apocalyptic ruminations of some 14th century writers. A tendency pessimism that sometimes approaches catastrophism seems to be the dominant thought-style of the recent era. Even the ending of the Cold War has unexpectedly intensified the gloom, no doubt perhaps because it has brought to prominence a variety of social and economic problems that seem even more intractable than the priority problems of the past. Optimism and pessimism are also reflected in the publicopinion mood swings that more through the population at large like waves through the sea. In the USA, opinion pollsters like to keep track of this. Periodically they ask people to rate (on a scale from 0 to 10) how well things are going in the country - both presently and, as best they can foresee, five years ahead. The arithmetical difference between the two is taken to reflect a mode of tendency optimism or pessimism. At the larger level of societies, optimism and pessimism seem to contain the seeds of their own destruction. The conditions of human life being what they are, optimism leads to disappointed expectations and pessimism to a realization that, having expected the worst, what actually happens presents a pleasant surprise. The maintenance of a balanced, neutral state is difficult for individuals and near impossible for societies; life is a matter of waxing or waning - of up or of down. At the

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level of societies, a cyclic oscillation between optimism and pessimism seems to be an ongoing phenomenon.

5. A Cloud of Unknowing For us humans the future is veiled, as it were, in a cloud of unknowing. Through our predictive efforts we peer into it as we peer into a fog. Very little can be seen at a distance - and that little with but little clarity. But as things draw near, the fog of unforeseeability dissipates, and we can - frequently make out their features with greater detail. And so it is with the future. Is this an unmitigated misfortune? Would we even want the predictive project to be perfectible? H o w much would we actually want to know about the future - at any rate about that relatively near-term future that is most relevant for the lives of ourselves and those we know of and care about? Would we really want to have foreknowledge of the suffering that the yet unturned pages of time and circumstance hold in store for us and our children and their posterity - the catastrophes and misfortunes and suffering that await us all? Would we - to take a more realistic example - want to know of the unbeatable diseases and decays that lie in wait for us in the genetic alleys of our makeup ? Surely few punishments that could be inflicted upon a person would be as bad as to be confronted with the timetable of one's future - to be informed station by station, as it were, of all the major eventuations of one's life on earth. What misfortune will not be multiplied by anticipation, what triumph not diminished by foreknowledge of its certainty and its impermanence? It is the element of openness - of uncertainty - that gives our human present its savor and our envisioned future its special character of openness. The factors of contingency and impredictability play a central and definitive part here. There is a big experiential difference between the original game and the replay where the outcome is already "a foregone conclusion."

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Sheer contingent impredictability gives life's eventuations a special interest. N o t only in reading novels, plays, and mystery stories, but also in living their everyday lives people generally welcome novelty and surprise whenever this does not involve something that is inherently unpleasant. In general the unsurprising is, for that very reason, uninteresting. ( N o one finds "yesterday's news" all that intriguing.) We admire the technical skill of the tight-rope walker. But the ever-present chance that something may go wrong adds a special thrill to the process. O u r psychological and emotional condition is such that we would not want to live in a pre-programmed world - a world where the rest of our fate and future is pre-ordained and indeed pre-discernible in the realities of the present. The human yearning for novelty - for new experiences and prospects and possibilities - is surely a characteristic aspect of what makes us into the sorts of creatures we are. A predictable world is one where the future is already fully pre-figured in the condition of the present, and this is something we naturally find repugnant. Even at the price of falling victim to chance and haphazard we yearn for novelty and innovation - for a liberation from an inevitability programmed by the past's dead hand. Escape from the ennui of established routines and predictable activities constitutes an important objective in our lives. The feeling of open horizons - of new developments that make for suspense and surprises - is inherent in our human nature. (Had we been content with pre-figured predictability we could have remained in the Garden of Eden.) For a satisfying human life we need to exist in a halfway house with regard to predictability. We need (and apparently have) a balance - a world that is predictable enough to make the conduct of life manageable, and - by and large - convenient. But we also require the presence of much that is impredictable, novel, and surprising. A totally unpredictable world would be a horror even if (contrary to hypothesis) we were able to live in it. But the opposite extreme - a world that is substantially predictable - would equally be a horror.

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Predictability, then, is not a be-all and end-all. We humans need novelty and innovation - contact with the new, strange circumstances to nourish our minds and spirits. Without some exposure to chance and uncertainty we cannot function as the creatures we are - the sort of creatures we have become under the pressure of evolutionary development. We thrive in the interstices of chance that pervade a world of predominantly lawful order. We play games of chance, seek out stories and plays with unpredictable "suspense" endings, and pursue novelty change and breaks in routine precisely so to make life less predictable - less dull, routine, and boring. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has given eloquent formulation to the salient point: I suppose the human yearning for knowledge of the future is insatiable. That is why fortune tellers and astrologers and Tarot card dealers and palm readers flourish. Yet how lucky it is that the future itself consistently frustrates those who purport to unravel it. For, if the future could be predicted, what fun would remain in life? Successful prediction, moreover, implies a deterministic universe and would expose human freedom as an illusion. It is the very indeterminacy of things that emboldens us to believe that, within limits, we can make our own future. So let us bless history for continuing to outwit all our certitudes. As General de Gaulle has said, "One should not insult the future." 8

To be sure, it is all a matter of degree. We humans very much need order, routine, and predictability. Yet here, as elsewhere, there can be too much of a good thing. We cannot lead moral, happy, flourishing lives in a world that is not predominantly predictable. Nor can we lead such lives in a world where there is no room for uncertainty and impredictability. The gift of total insight into our own future would be a poisoned chalice. For life as we know and want it, our own human micro-environment needs a peculiar combination of these two factors. Unless we are prepared to cease to be what we are - to abandon the Spinozistic conatus se preservando that impels every natural species to seek to perpetuate itself as the sort of thing it

8

9

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "The Future Outwits Us Again," The Journal, Op-ed page, 20 September 1993. Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, Pt. Ill, prop. VI if.

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is - we have to see the limits of predictability as a good thing. A world that is substantially predictable is one in which we humans as such would not really want to live, given (per impossibile) the option of a free choice. An enjoyable life, like a good story, must have a judicious mixture of uncertainty (suspense) and predictability (security). All the same, such escapes should themselves be circumscribed, limited and predictable if they are to prove benign. We need and seek novelty and change, but it remains something we want in predictable ways. (Which is why we opt for the predictability of genres such as "the detective story.") To live in ways that render our circumstances substantially foreseeable - at least as regards fundamentals - is an important feature of our human strategy for survival in a complex world. The analogy of a game is illuminating. For us, the world has something of the character of a chess match played between grand masters: nature and history. In one way there is predictability - we know perfectly well how they'll move their pieces: in line with the rules of chess (here, the laws of nature). But we do not have foreknowledge as to which moves they will actually make. And this aspect of the game resembles human life: there is significant contingency within a framework of substantial regularity. It is surely of the essence of the condition of humanity as we know it that we live in a halfway house as regards predictability - a mixture of knowing and ignorance that may change in its proportions with the condition of the times but always hovers well between the extremes. For us, constituted as we are, a world that is too preponderantly predictable or too preponderantly unpredictable would alike prove disastrous. But back to progress. We set out from the observation that progress is a matter not just of change, but of change in the direction of improvement. And this tends to the sixty-four dollar question: will the future improve on the past. Will the human condition of our children's children - and their children's children - be better than our own? Is history - at any rate over the near-term future - to be a matter of onwards and

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upwards? The current condition of things leaves much room for scepticism and agnosticism here. It takes an individual of more daring than I possess to offer any confident prognostication in this regard. I simply do not know if we can count on much further progress in the quality of life of people on this planet. But I do know that people of good will should and will make the effort to do what they can in this direction.

Rudolf

Flotzinger

Progress and Development in Music History

Some introductory remarks seem to be necessary before I start: 1) It is not only because this discussion is organized by the Academia Europaea shall I speak about European (Western, art-) music only, and not about music in a universal sense. And though I am asked to deal with progress in music "as an example of how progress is seen in one of the arts," I have to include musicology (professional speaking and writing about music), too - or better I'll start with it. I hope that the reasons for this will become clear by themselves. 2) It is self-evident that such an abstract topic would need references to certain language problems: on the question of translation, at least that a word in different languages can have different meanings and can show contrasting differentiations. But these I must leave aside. 3) I do not want merely to summarize literature about the problem. I wanted to find my personal access to it, and I began with a very trivial knowledge of music history and with my own experiences. So I do hope that I can be easily understood by non-musicologists. Obviously the examples are not exhaustive and taken mainly from German-speaking authors. 4) As one can observe very often, nearly always when people call upon history (not in the professional way only) the term progress (.Fortschritt) is mixed up with development (Entwicklung). Sometimes both are taken completely synonymously, at least they are connected very closely. According to my first impression, the reason for this terminological indistinguishability is that both words in history are properly metaphors (namely for the description of sequences of changing events, a

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transition from one situation to another). If they are used differently - even today - then mainly according to quite trivial understanding. The model for progress seems to be taken either from an evaluation ("better than before," i.e., when looking at the past) or a certain planning (i.e., looking in the other direction into the future), and the model for development is obviously biology. That the changes within biological processes are due to an inner force might be the reason that a corresponding logical connection (if not necessity) often is also ascribed to this usage of the word development, and from here it seems sometimes to be transferred to progress, too. The historical-philosophical background for that I can only hint at. O n the other hand, the term development does not have an evaluating aspect as does progress - at least not the same one. The main reason for speaking about development in history is obviously that life constantly changes. A posteriori, that may look like a biological development, but one has to consider that the different cultural situations which one wants to describe became different because man (not an inner force) changed something.

I. In any case progress in the arts has something to do with history 1 (i.e., with time). And as the arts are always ways of managing life (and according to Adorno can be taken as a "subconscious history of their epoch") progress plays an important role in Western music. Its history is characterized first of all as an "intention to create always new" 2 (mainly traditionally, unreflected and self-confidential), and in fact one can interpret music history under that aspect ("newness") alone. Occasionally 1

2

Edward H. Carr, What is history? (London, 1961): history is moving procession. Walter Wiora, "Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Musikgeschichte," Deutsches Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1956), p. 76-110, esp. p. 78.

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we find very harsh statements of musicians who want(ed) not only to make music different from the past or to compose new works but also to create new concepts of music and to begin new epochs. Then they often contrast their own "new music" to the "older" one in a somewhat polemical way. In some cases we find it in certain programmatic titles which afterwards were taken as denominations of the periods: e.g., Ars nova (about 1320, in France), Nuove musiche (about 1600, in Florence), Modern and New music (shortly before and after 1900, resp. in several European centers from Paris through Vienna to Moscow),3 New Simplicity {Neue Einfachheit, in the 1970s in Germany). 4 Every "new" music from the Ars nova in the early 14th up to Schönbergs "New music" in the early 20th century understood itself as being progressive,5 - of course in different respects (e.g., a new possibility of notation), with different arguments (e.g., new compositional techniques) and with different terms (e.g., moderni vs. antiqui by no means in the 20th century only, new vs. old, new and old, the new taking in the old one, and, as a last step, the rational planning of the future). Besides such ostentatious and programmatic steps it was absolutely normal that up to the late baroque (early 18th century) every age preferred its own music. First of all this was simply a tradition. Yet perhaps this fact also has to do with the notion that human individuals and cultures are not only able to learn but must learn. And to learn means to accumulate in-

3

4

5

Cf. Kurt von Fischer, "Der Begriff des ' N e u e n ' in der Musik von der Ars nova bis zur Gegenwart," in: Report of the Eighth Congress [of the International musicological society] N e w York 1961 I (Kassel etc., 1961), p. 184-195. Elmar Budde, "Musik jenseits von Fortschritt und Geschichte - zur Musik der 70er Jahre," in: Bericht über den internat, musikwiss. Kongreß Bayreuth 1981 (Kassel etc., 1981), p. 192-195. H a n s Heinrich Eggebrecht, "Der Begriff des ' N e u e n ' in der Musik von der Ars nova bis zur Gegenwart," in: Report of the Eighth Congress New York 1961 I, p. 195-202; H a r t m u t Möller, "Permanenter Wandel - wohin? Nachdenken über ein faszinierendes Geschichtsbild der mittelalterlichen Musik," Beiträge zur Gregorianik 13/14 (Regensburg, 1992), p. 119-128.

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vestigations and experiences (which includes alteration, absorbing and resetting older ones by new ones). This sequence then we can also describe as progress but it certainly was never called so in earlier times, at least in music. Up to the baroque period music of former times was taken as interesting at most because of certain aspects but never simply because it was old (as is the case now). That means they had their idea of what to prefer but time as such played no great (even an unreflective) role. This changed in the 18th century only when old music acquired its own value beside the new. From that moment on, not only the argument "new" but music history as a whole got another dimension, and in this connection the idea of progress, and finally the word progress was actually introduced. 6 The very first, though mostly fragmental books on music history (by Martini, Hawkins, Burney, de la Borde, and Forkel, 7 written between the 1750s and 1780s) are more or less documentations of the musical progress they saw, up to the climax already reached. 8 That means that now for the first time evidently not composers but critics argued about the problem, and it is obvious that it happened within a short time in different countries (Italy, England, France, and Germany). All authors mentioned draw their pictures according to the idea of development, and therefore they had at least some implications of progress. An early critical voice against this came from the French author Fétis in 1860: he completely denied progress in the arts and on the contrary saw the main difference between the arts on the

6

7

8

O n l y a little later the traditional bindings to certain functions were relaxed, and perhaps f r o m then on the development of composition and reception were more and more separated. They seem to have come closer again only most recently. Giovanni Battista Martini, Storia della musica, 1757-81; John Hawkins, General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 1776; Charles Burney, General History of Music, 1776-89; Benjamin de la Borde, Essai sur la musique, 1780; Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, 1788-1801. Carl Dahlhaus, Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts (= Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft ß, Laaber, 1985), p. 14.

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one hand and science on the other in precisely this point. 9 Nevertheless, music histories were written under the auspices of development up to our day. Shortly after the publication of one leading book, Guido Adler's Handbook of Music History, in the 1920s10 criticism again - and now very emphatically was formulated by several authors 11 who wanted the term development replaced simply by change,u This obviously was above all directed against the evaluating aspects but again did not gain real recognition. The only result was that reflection on the problem of progress was increased. We may take Jacques Handschin's Music History (1st ed. 1948) as fundamental in this regard, where the question is discussed in connection with quantitative distribution and periodisation. His conviction that "every epoch merits our attention in the same measure" 13 led him to the nearly total elimination of periodisations and to the principle of giving to different times the same number of printed pages as far as possible. The first of these principles was taken up in different ways, for instance by the New Handbook of Musicology of the 1980s.14 In 1980 Walter Wiora discussed the interchanges and differences between development and progress in music history at great length. H e also explains progress as "development upwards" but he fails to say what up and down, higher and lower are and how they could be measured or at least defined. Obviously one has to

9

10

11

12

13 14

François-Joseph Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens I (Paris, 1860), p. VI. Guido Adler (ed.), Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (2nd ed., Frankfurt/M., 1924, Berlin, 1930). see, e.g., Paul Bekker, Musikgeschichte als Geschichte der musikalischen Formwandlungen (Berlin-Leipzig, 1926); Ernst Bücken, Geist und Form im musikalischen Kunstwerk (= H a n d b u c h der Musikwissenschaft, Wildpark-Potsdam, 1929), p. 76f. Cf. Walter Wiora, Ideen zur Geschichte der Musik (= Impulse der Forschung 31, Darmstadt, 1980), p. 78. Jacques Handschin, Musikgeschichte im Überblick (Luzern, 1948), p. 16. This work devides music history simply according to centuries; Carl Dahlhaus (ed.), Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Laaber, 1980-92).

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believe in it or find a consensus in another way (e.g., learned through history itself). On the other hand one has to assume a certain polemic intent behind his words when he refers to "belief" in which only the Marxist systems should be essential. Wiora assumes the existence of "development without progress and on the other hand progress which is not development but change or a new beginning ... therefore progressive is nearly equivalent to productive.'"5 So finally, we only find confirmed the coherence of progress and development. Ten years later, taking up the arguments of other authors (especially Zofia Lissa and Carl Dahlhaus), Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht characterized Western music by five criteria: theory, notation, composition, historicity and transportability }b Obviously also these aspects, too, are connected very closely, and Eggebrecht explains them (drawing on the sociologist Max Weber) as concentrated in the single word, rationality}7 This brings in a proper human aspect (not only the difference between nature and culture) and one can agree with that. Yet, it is no less interesting to look at these arguments from our point of view: If we agree that theory, notation, composition and work (as the result of the latter) are so interconnected18 that one could summarize them in the single word, composition, and if in the same way historicity and transportability can be seen together, then only two arguments remain: composition and history. They again have in common the fact of changing in the course of time (i.e., styles), and finally it depends on your personal point of view (and/or belief) how you interpret them. So both progress and development evidently are certain forms of interpretation and one can argue in complete contrast

15 16

17

18

Wiora, Ideen zur Geschichte der Musik, p. 78-83, esp. p. 80. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Musik im Abendland. Prozesse und Stationen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich and Zurich, 1991), p. 37. Max Weber, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (Munich, 11921); cf. Christoph Braun, "Max Webers 'Musiksoziologie'," (= Neue Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 20, Laaber 1992). N o composition without theory, no work without notation, etc.

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to Wiora, that obviously (and always) progress is an evaluation, namely "up" ( according to Wiora) - to more complexity, to a higher standard of compositional techniques, in aesthetical argumentation, in social relevance, in value and so on. That means that one has not only to believe but also to collect arguments. In this way the term progress is not only serious and precise {in respect to what, under which auspices, from something to or even up to something) but it also remains relative (to a certain culture, historical context, social goal etc.). Development, on the other hand, is either a more indifferent word (somehow equivalent to changing in indeterminate directions) or a simple transposition from the organic world with its inner necessity to history or music, respectively The question then again can only be, how far the metaphor reaches: expressing a logic,19 a certain inner consequence, 20 perhaps a necessity21 or truth.22 Discussions about certain rules or even laws in history (e.g., cycles, rhythm of generations) seem to be are out nowadays. Actually they could appeal to belief only - or there are no real cycles (to have some regressive steps within a development is no cycle). For the generation of Forkel, the idea of progress with biological implications was a real starting point. Forkel outlined the periods in music history (seen as phases in every culture 19

20

21

22

Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (Frankfurt a. M., 1958), p. 72; Igor Strawinsky, Expositions and Developments (London, 1962). See, e.g., Schönberg (cf. Frank Schneider, "Schönbergs Denken über Musik," in: Scheider, Schönberg, Stil und Gedanke, Leipzig, 1989, p. 10); Wiora, "Zur Grundlegung," p. 100: "mit geschichtslogischer Konsequenz"; Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, p. 34ff (under the heading "Schönberg and progress"). See e.g., Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik I (Leipzig, 1788), Einleitung, p. 17, 20; Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea ( N e w York, 1950), p. 103; cf. Charlotte Cross, Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Method and the Problem of Freedom and Necessity, Ph. D. Diss. Columbia Univ. 1991. See e.g., Forkel, Geschichte der Musik I, p. 24; Schönberg (1911): "Die Musik soll nicht schmücken, sie soll wahr sein" (cf. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, p. 45).

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and nation) according to childhood, youth and manhoodΡ "Arts and sciences grow as all creatures of nature only stepwise up to perfection." The history of man as a whole he takes as progress "stepwise from simple to complex, from small to great," a "path which the human spirit takes in the development of its abilities in general and especially of our art," 24 which finally means in his eyes a process of increasing enlightenment (.Aufklärung). The basis for this was an understanding of the progress of the human spirit which in his time was already common and was for instance pointed out by Condorcet in France, 179425 (Forkel wrote some years earlier). It is then not surprising at all that the earliest examples in Grimm's famous German vocabulary oriented on language history 26 are taken from the same time and are of comparable kinds. They refer to progress in literature (Pestalozzi 1781) and human abilities (Wieland 1794, Nicolai 1811). What is surprising is the total lack of reference to nature or even biology (even under the keyword Entwicklung/development) and the surprise grows if one remembers the discoveries of organic development of the time, e.g., Goethe's idea of protoplant (Urpflanze).27 So according to Goethe history doesn't go straight on but nevertheless "climbs up." 28 This idea was even more the basis for the history of certain aspects like genres, styles and so 23 24

25

26

27

28

Forkel, Geschichte der Musik I, p. 11, 16. Forkel, Geschichte der Musik I, p. 1: "Künste und Wissenschaften wachsen wie alle Geschöpfe der N a t u r nur nach und nach zur Vollkommenheit hinauf; ... stuffenweise Fortschreitung vom Einfachen zum Zusammengesetzten, vom Kleinen zum Großen; ... Weg, den der Geist des Menschen bey der Entwicklung seiner Fähigkeiten überhaupt, insbesondere aber unserer Kunst nimmt." Antoine de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, 1794. Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, vol. 4 (Leipzig, 1878), p. 30. Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe, Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (1790). Cf. Walther Krüger, "Der Entwicklungsbegriff in der Musikgeschichte," Die Musikforschung 8 (1955), p. 131.

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on 29 in different fields (not only in the arts), e.g., also for learning, the counterpoint of education - both very important elements in the enlightenment movement. Forkel only once refers to nature directly when - and this is remarkable - he uses both words, progress and development, in one sentence. Even more so: he explains progress as "gradual natural development and creation out of each other." 30 So we have the basis for three conclusions: 1) the close relationship between both terms in history, 2) that direct biological parallels in music played no very great role in the 18th century; 3) that therefore another general view about raising the human spirit has to explain most of the consequences for composers (let's say from Beethoven onwards, esp. in respect to the enlightenment). In the 19th and 20th centuries then we find quite a number of persons 31 and groups who directly refer to progress in music:32 the so called Zukunftsmusik (Music of the future, a name given to Chopin, Liszt and Berlioz since 1847; in 1860 Richard Wagner published a famous article under that title); then the so called Neudeutsche Schule (New Germanschool) around Franz Liszt, which in 1859 defined itself as a Progress-party (Fortschritts-Partei)·, the Neue Musik (New music) of the so called Second Viennese School around Schönberg after 1904; the fu29 30

31

32

This can be seen in many titles of musicological books and dissertations. Forkel, Geschichte der Musik I, p. 29: "Eben so, wie die Zweige eines Baums, wachsen auch die einzelnen Theile einer Wissenschaft oder Kunst, theils nach und nach, theils zugleich empor, und diese Art ihrer Entwicklung aus einander macht es ungemein schwer, sie nach ihrer natürlichsten O r d n u n g hintereinander zu stellen oder zu lehren." Cf. Peter Rummenhöller, Musiktheoretisches Denken im 19. Jahrhundert (= Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 12, Regensburg, 1967) passim. Cf. Christoph von Blumröder, Der Begriff "neue Musik " im 20. Jahrhundert (= Freiburger Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft 12, Munich and Salzburg, 1981), p. 20-23 ('Fortschritt' und 'Avantgarde'); Karl Gustav Feilerer, "Der Akademismus in der deutschen Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts," Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 60 (Regensburg, 1987), p. 191-236.

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turism of Ferruccio Busoni's booklet New Aesthetic of Music (1907)33 and of several groups in Italy and Russia around 1910, and several other avant-garde groups. Most of them are characterized not only by a very strong demand for the "new" or a certain "passion" 34 but again and above all by rationality. Rational arguments were thought to enable musicians to shape or even to create the future. From there comes the keyword futurism, which is - so to speak - an extrapolation of one way of seeing progress into the future. Several composers now openly used the word progressivity, e.g., Schönberg when he - of course relating to himself - called Brahms a progressive.35 Yet he didn't do so to fight against certain "old" arguments and "misunderstandings" or to plead for a change of style only but to demonstrate continuity out of the past at the same time. This at first seems to be a contradiction but it certainly is not if one bears in mind the demand for continual innovation that I started with. O n the other hand it is not surprising that increased intentions of progress in connection with a certain skepticism (e.g., Friedrich Hegel or Charles Baudelaire), provoked such contrasting ideas in music as well (not only the so called tiredness of progress and/or tiredness of history): for instance in 1951 the composer Arthur Honegger expressed his conviction that music was dying; 36 and much more provocative was the suggestion by Pierre Boulez to bomb the opera-houses (1967).37 But also in these cases one shouldn't see only the alternative between avant-gardism (which means "always going ahead" without integrating the past) and pessimism. The other side of the coin shows that always to demand the "new" im33

34 35

36 37

Ferruccio Busoni, Versuch einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Triest, 1907). Cf. Walter Wiora, Die vier Weltalter der Musik (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 165. Arnold Schoenberg, "Brahms the progressive," in: Style and Idea ( N e w York, 1950); "Brahms der Fortschrittliche," in: Stil und Gedanke (Leipzig, 1989), p. 99-145. Arthur Honegger, Je suis compositeur (Paris, 1951). Pierre Boulez, "Sprengt die Opernhäuser in die Luft!" in: Der Spiegel 40 (1967).

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plies in principle a form of destruction of the "old." Then it's only a question of consistency whether to destroy it only in mind or in words or in reality. (Such a destructive aspect was already part of some futuristic manifestos since 1909 and programs of several mysteries, e.g., Scriabin 1912). In the meantime (in the 1970s) "Postmodernity" was propagated as a way out of the dilemma that the ever new doesn't seem possible ad infinitum: progress, consisting in a sequence of styles, has at least some different directions - which means diversity instead of one way only.

II. Further and somewhat more direct consequences of the quasi-biological parallel to development can be seen in different periods and on different levels. I shall give only some examples. 1) N o t only the trivial opinion but also serious textbooks suggest more or less directly that musical development starts with simplicity and ends with complexity, starts with simple sounds, human expressions, and instrumental signals, then goes on to more structured melodies and finally comes to complicated compositions. A simplified consequence of that view is to take the term monopbonyiS as equivalent to "simple" and polyphony19 as equivalent to "complicated" 40 - and to take this as the only classification of the whole system. There is no question that this is insufficient and that the simplification

38 39 40

To have only one voice. Several voices. Cf. Rudolf Flotzinger, "Was heißt hier frühe Mehrstimmigkeit?" Paper read at the symposium "Ethnologie und historische Musikwissenschaft. Gemeinsame Ziele, gleiche Methoden?" in Mainz 1991 (cf. Acta musicologica 63/1991, p. 121f; in press).

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goes back to opinions we already found in Forkel. 41 And it is again unquestionable that they are wrong and could easily be refuted. 42 In this case the idea of progress has brought a big handicap into research and we are just beginning to overcome it.43 2) Another triviality says that musical classicism is represented by "Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven." (It would take more space to make it clear, why this triad can hardly be confirmed scientifically.44 That here again a quite trivial understanding of progress plays a role can be seen in a dictum by the aestheticist Wilhelm Christian Müller from 1830: that Haydn was "the pioneer of classicism, Mozart fulfilled it, and Beethoven already passed it." 45 3) A comparable triad formulated by Paul Bekker, most probably modeled on the former one and in connection with Austrian symphony says that "Franz Schubert is the herald, Anton Bruckner its strongest elementary force, and Gustav Mahler its accomplisher." 46 4) It is said that no question has been more deeply affected by evolutionary thinking than the classical sonata of the 18th

41

42

43

44

45

46

Forkel, Geschichte der Musik I, p. 45: "The most simple, very first and oldest musical genre is choral. It undeniably comes f r o m the oldest times and is the only remainder of the music of ancient nations". It is often is much easier for several persons to sing together polyphonically than monophonically; especially choral m o n o p h o n y can be highly artificial and difficult; cf. Rudolf Flotzinger, " U n a voce. Die Ausführung des Chorals und das Problem der frühen Ein- und Mehrstimmigkeit," in: Musikkulturgeschichte. Festschrift für Constantin Floros (Wiesbaden, 1990), p. 439ÍF. For further comparable examples cf. Krüger, "EntwicklungsbegrifF," p. 132-138. It is said to go back to a wish by the C o u n t Waldstein when dismissing the young Beethoven in 1792 but was used only many years later. Wilhelm Christian Müller, Versuch einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst im Zusammenhange mit den übrigen schönen Künsten nach geschichtlicher Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1830), p. 250f. Paul Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (Berlin, 1921), p. 11.

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century. 47 Again it would take more time to outline this statement sufficiently, but the affectation as such can easily be seen from terminology itself. The three parts of the sonata form in the 1830s (i.e., a posteriori) acquire the names exposition, development, and reprise. At the first glance no more words seem to be necessary. But one must not forget that this was twenty years before Darwin. Before I try to explain this anticipation (if it is one) let's have a look at the time afterwards. It doesn't surprise us that after Darwin (whose theory influenced - as everybody knows - many other fields)48 we more often find direct references to biology in music as well, e.g., Guido Adler who laid the foundation of modern musicology in 1885 (the aim of an art historian is to show "how from the beginning of a simple melody the construction of the works of art gradually grows ... how step by step a chain of cells forms it and in such a way grows organically, how elements outside the progressive movement which are not viable die.") 49 And it is obvious that we have to see the reference to Goethe's Urpflanze in the lectures by the composer Anton Webern in 1932 in this (Darwinistic) light.50 But for us much more important is that Webern as in the case of sonata - doesn't relate to music history in general but to music itself, to the compositional technique. 51 It would be (it is) an unforgivable simplification to see in it only a transposition from history to its parts. 5) N o w I come back to the question I left aside, but for that argumentation we have to go back to the very beginning of

47

48 49

50

51

Stefan Kunze, Die Sinfonie des 18. Jahrhunderts (= Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen 1, Laaber, 1993), p. 278ff. See, for instance, social Darwinism. Guido Adler, "Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft," VfMw 1 (1885), p. 9. As an example how far the analogy to biology can be driven cf. Heinrich Schenker, Harmonielehre (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1906), passim, esp. p. 19 (Das Biologische in den Formen), 106 (Biologische Begründung des Mischungsprinzips). "Dasselbe Gesetz hat für alles Lebende Geltung." Anton Webern, Der Weg zur Neuen Musik, ed. Willi Reich (Vienna, 1960), p. 56f.

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composing in Western music (on the other hand this fact shows that we are really dealing with essential aspects). The opinions about the beginning of Western polyphony before the very first written sources in 9th century are still controversial. Yet there is no question that the beginning of composition in a narrow sense (i.e., composition as opposed to improvisation) has to do with different musical lines (voices, Stimmen) and that it acquired another level in writing it down (notation). This writing brought with it - at least in the 11th century and as the most fundamental difference to improvisation - another dimension of the time problem: Time (as human beings take it) is essential for music insofar as its realization and reception is possible only in time (in contrast e.g., to a painting and perhaps more than language). O n the other hand sitting in front of a parchment, table or paper the composer can at any time stop, he can consider, can choose between different possibilities which new tone he sets to an already written one. By doing that he always was (and still is) guided by certain rules, he goes on step by step and - which is most important for our question - he fixes steps, namely a progression from one tone and/or sound to another. One of the early rule systems (for improvisation already very close to composition) we call Klangschrittlehre (system of sound progressions52 and from the oldest textbooks up to the present we find terms like progredere in Latin, proceed in English and fortschreiten in German for the sequence of one tone after the other in a melody, of sound after sound in harmony, key after key in modulation. Certainly I do not want to connect these progressions too closely with progress. But first of all one has to consider certain inner consequences also in these cases53 and secondly it must be mentioned as an argument against another triviality: that

52

53

Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht et al., Die mittelalterliche Lehre von der Mehrstimmigkeit (= Geschichte der Musiktheorie 5, Darmstadt, 1984). Forkel, e.g., calls harmony "the logic of music" (Geschichte der Musik I, p. 24f).

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also this54 goes back to the 18th century. 55 In fact it is a misinterpretation, 56 though an understandable one, if we keep in mind this very long and well-known tradition of speaking about progression. So I think this century old tradition and the essential connection of music with the flow of time made musicians and musicologists prepared to connect quite unreflectively and perhaps earlier than in other respects development and progress with each other. Therefore, finding a clear differentiation among several possibilities to deduce the term development for the middle part in the classical sonata is neither possible nor necessary. It seems more important that it was accepted in scientific discussions as well as by the composers. Perhaps also that it could be understood in different ways was somehow essential. But the main thing is that this part of the sonata called development (in German Durchführung) is the one where the musical substance (the theme/s) is/are steadily changed and really developed by the composer (by variation, fractionating, puzzling, sequencing and spinning further-terms which partly also refer to progression, in any case to rationality). This compositional technique therefore was also called development (in German motivisch-thematische Arbeit, Durchführungstechnik). N o t only was it new in the 18th century but it was even the essential contribution of the classicists Haydn and Mozart to the classical musical style.57 In this case the higher complexity actually plays a great role - even for the classification as "classical"! In the middle of the 19th century (esp. in the music of Wagner, Liszt and Bruckner, and in a somewhat different manner 54

55 56

57

Especially in regard to progression of sounds, Tonschritte, Harmoniefortschreitungen etc. Namely, to Jean Philipp Rameau, Harmonie universelle, 1722. For instance, in 1746 Johann Friedrich Daube said that Rameau should have "discovered the natural progression of harmonies" (with emphasis on natural not on progression!); cf. H u g o Riemann, Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX.-XIX. Jahrhundert (2nd ed., Berlin, 1921), p. 488. To tell the truth, they only completed earlier starting points from the first half of the century.

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of Brahms) this compositional technique (for Gestaltung) was more and more extended and transferred from the development section to others, even to the exposition (which is nearly a contradiction in terms).58 All these steps (one has to hold oneself back not to speak about developments in the historical sense) became more and more a process "logically following each other." Because it came out of the music itself, it ended in the idea of the so called "absolute music," 59 which again implies a certain high standard and value. And this fundamental connection to music finally could explain the special proximity to, if not anticipation of that very complex and converging ideas of progression an ¿progress as early as in the 18 th century. I can't help it, I must refer to Wieland's quotation in Grimm's vocabulary: "In language the results of all human progress are actually fixed." 6) One new category that shows the sometimes announced and as often denied as deplored end of musical works in an emphatic sense (if not of Western music as such) in our days is "work in progress." 60 Again I do not want to connect independent things too quickly. But it is obvious that behind this term and idea again stands history as an experience which then is condensed into a certain artistic event.

III.

There is finally another possibility dealing with parallels between the organic, historical and human development: to take them not in a quasi- or meta-organic way but as starting points for a better method of investigation. After some earlier efforts

58

59

60

Carl Dahlhaus, Zwischen Romantik und Moderne (= Berliner Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 7, Munich, 1974), p. 45. Carl Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel etc., and Munich, 1978). Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, "Opusmusik," in: Musikalisches Denken (= Taschenbücher zur Musikwissenschaft 46, Wilhelmshaven, 1977), p. 219f.

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in this direction (e.g., by Curt Sachs) the most convincing and successful is Kneplers book History as a Way to Understand Music (1977).61 It is not oriented towards one single discipline (like anthropology, comparative behavior studies etc.) to advance music history. Knepler tries to bring in as many aspects and stimulations as possible. Thus, his book marks nearly a change of paradigm in musicology and has in the meantime provoked quite a number of further studies which can be taken as fundamental in systematic musicology of today. 62 As the title says, Knepler takes history in the most consequent manner and of course progress plays a large role in his book. Actually it is the most comprehensive treatment of progress in music history. 63 So we can speak of three steps, musicians and critics thinking about music, arguing for and demanding the constantly "new"; history of music as a sequence of events, which are more and more rationalized; and finally modern musicology as their integration into the principal human considerations and finally into philosophy: that is not only the historical sequence but - hopefully at least an intellectual progress. This does not touch on the question of personal stylistic predilections of an

61

62

63

Georg Knepler, Geschichte als Weg zum Musikverständnis. Zur Theorie, Methode und Geschichte der Musikgeschichtsschreihung (Leipzig, 1977), esp. part 3 (Von der Notwendigkeit des Fortschrittsbegriffes f ü r die Musikgeschichtsschreibung), p. 365-536. See, e.g., Christian Kaden, Des Lebens wilder Kreis. Musik im Zivilisationsprozeß (Kassel etc., 1993); Günter Tembrock, "Musik und Geschichte: Ein Beitrag der Evolutionsbiologie," in: Zwischen Aufklärung & Kulturindustrie. Festschrift für Georg Knepler zum 85. Geburtstag I ( H a m burg, 1993), p. 25-35; János Maróthy - Márta Batári, "Ethomusikologie. Zusammenhänge zwischen Neurobiologie, Verhaltensforschung und Klangmikroskopie, ästhetisch betrachtet," in: ibid., p. 37-43. With his method of a total "historisation" Knepler solved an old problem, too: the lack of communication (if not discrepancy) between the traditional branches of musicology (music history, ethnomusicology, systematic musicology). It may touch you or not: this was done by an author coming f r o m the same school which started all these problems (the Austrian musicology, founded by Adler).

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educated modern listener. In any case the term progress is quite important in music, perhaps more than an outsider would assume, not simple but multi-dimensional, and much more interesting than only as a little piece in a bigger puzzle.

Dag Prawitz

Progress in Philosophy

My title "Progress in Philosophy," is ambiguous - which suits me well since I want to deal with the subject matter in two ways. In the first part I shall be concerned with progress as a theme within philosophy. Questions of progress have engaged philosophers in many ways. First of all the very notion of progress, the idea of progress, is closely linked to central philosophical concepts. But also the questions to what extent and in what respects there has been progress, or will be progress, have been much discussed within philosophy. For instance, the very questions what is to be meant by scientific progress and how it occurs, if it occurs, are main topics within philosophy of science. In the second part of the talk, I shall deal with philosophical progress, i.e., questions about philosophy's own progress - in what way, if any, does philosophy make progress. I shall deal especially with one field of philosophy.

1. The Notion of Progress The notion of progress is what philosophers call a value concept. Progress has occurred when something has improved, i.e., when one state of affairs is followed in time by a second state that is better or more valuable than the first one. It is common in philosophy to make a distinction between absolute or intrinsic values, on the one hand, and relative or instrumental values, on the other hand. Something is of instrumental value if it is good as means to obtain something else. For in-

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stance, bigger and straighter motor roads help to speed up transportation, and they have thus instrumental value with respect to that end. How valuable they really are depends, of course, on the value of speeding up transportation. In contrast, increased quality of life is of value in itself, it has absolute or intrinsic value. Accordingly, we may speak of a piece of intrinsically valuable progress when there is an increase in intrinsic value and of a piece of instrumentally valuable progress or relative progress with respect to E, when there is an increase in instrumental value with respect to the end E. A change may of course constitute an intrinsically valuable progress in one respect and a regress in another respect. I shall then say that it constitutes an absolute progress, if, on balance, the increase in value outweighs the decrease so that on the whole the situation really has got better. One may also ask: value for whom. I shall therefore also distinguish between what I shall call global progress and local progress. Global progress occurs when there is an increase of value for the whole of humanity and local when there is an increase for some individual or group of individuals. If we look at biological evolution, one may perhaps say that it involves progress in some respects, but it is not meaningful to try to compare these respects with each other and speak of an overall progress. In contrast, in human affairs, what really matters is absolute global progress, what we also could call real progress. I think that too little attention is paid to progress in this sense. Clearly it is a notion that is central in moral philosophy and value theory. The question what constitutes real progress is indeed concerned with what we want to make, or ought to make of our lives. In spite of the complexity of the question, I believe that it is possible to make progress with respect to it. Nevertheless, like so many other people, I shall leave this question here.

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2. The Myth of Progress One cause of our neglecting the important questions of real progress - what counts as real progress and how we achieve it - may be the belief that progress is the normal course of events, perhaps even something that occurs with historical necessity. This belief is what has been called the myth of progress by Professor von Wright, whose writings about this issue have provoked a great and sometimes heated discussion in Finland and Sweden. The progress that von Wright has in mind is, I think, absolute global progress. It is certainly not a myth but a fact that local progress in many respects takes place in the normal course of events. Local progress with respect to increased abilities is something that all individuals normally experience in the greater parts of their lives. When we grow very old we are content to keep up our abilities, but before that we normally expect and experience individual progress in a great number of respects. The belief in progress is in this way a natural ingredient in a normal life, and I would say, it is even an inevitable ingredient in many of our activities. For instance, we would not be discussing this subject if we did not believe that it could result in some kind of progress in our understanding of the idea of progress. In view of this general experience of progress and given democracy and the emancipation of mankind, which seems to allow us to shape our lives as we want, what is more natural than to expect what I have called absolute and global progress. This expectation is even more natural when we think of the growth of science and the great accumulation of knowledge thanks to institutional and technical inventions! Nevertheless, one must agree with von Wright that in many ways we seem to go towards regress rather than progress. One could speak about the paradox of progress: why is it that the local progress that occurs in such a great degree in many respects does not lead to real progress? I shall not try to resolve that paradox here. Instead I shall look further at one of the reasons for expecting progress, namely progress within the sciences.

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3. Progress in Science Most people agree that progress in respect to scientific knowledge is now the normal course of events, but it is not obvious what more precisely is to be meant by that. Although progress in the sciences is a main theme within philosophy of science, this discipline has surprising difficulties in giving a clear analysis of the issues involved. There is a sociological variant of the notion of scientific knowledge. One may speak about the spread of scientific knowledge, the average standards of scientific knowledge within a community and so on. Philosophers are usually not thinking of scientific knowledge in this empirical sense but have a more ideal notion in mind. It may be described as collective knowledge. The scientific knowledge at a certain moment of time is often equated with the total scientific knowledge that is available at that time; anything known by some person that is recorded so as to make it generally available belongs here. Understood in this way, there is a sense in which progress with respect to scientific knowledge is a normal course of events for essentially conceptual reasons. Knowledge is usually defined by philosophers as the same thing as true and justified beliefs - a belief that turns out not to be true is not counted as knowledge. It then follows that the stock of scientific knowledge is normally what the mathematicians call monotone in time, i.e., it can only grow as time goes on unless there is a massive destruction of scientific records or cultural disruptions that make the records unintelligible. It is more interesting therefore to consider not scientific knowledge but scientific beliefs held by leading scientists and to ask to what extent these beliefs constitute knowledge - progress occurs, we could say, when the scientists know more, i.e., when they have a more accurate picture of the world in the sense that there is a growth in true beliefs held by the scientists which is not too much detracted from by the false beliefs that they also hold. Although still somewhat vague, I think that

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this notion comes fairly close to what we ordinarily mean when we loosely speak of progress within science. Is it then quite clear that there is progress in science when the notion is understood as suggested above? In a science such as mathematics, this seems quite unproblematic. Mathematics is essentially cumulative. The stock of allegedly proved theorems constantly grows. Besides cultural disruptions, there are sometimes shifts of perspectives, and mistakes occur, but on the whole there is a steady growth of true mathematical beliefs. When we turn to the empirical sciences the situation is quite different. They are not cumulative. Philosophers of science as different from one another as Popper and Kuhn agree on this point. Both hold that the essential steps in the development of sciences consist in the abandoning of old beliefs. Here Popper stresses scientific refutations and Kuhn scientific revolutions. From those perspectives, what ground do we have for claiming progress in the empirical sciences? For Kuhn this question seems especially troublesome since he also holds that even the observational languages before and after a scientific revolution are not translatable one into the other, they are incommensurable as he says. Even if we do not follow Kuhn at this point, and claim that, on the whole, as time goes on, there is an accumulation of scientific data and perhaps also of low level scientific laws connecting observables, one must agree with him and with Popper that scientific theories do not only grow, but often one replaces the other. Does science then make progress with respect to its main, traditional aim to explain the world in' the sense of giving a true account of the world coherent with our observations? Popper and Kuhn could serve as two typical examples of how philosophy of science has tried to deal with this question. Popper accepts the question and thinks that the answer must of course be yes, but he is faced with the problem that there is no obvious ground for saying that a new theory is better than the refuted one in being closer to such a true account of the world. The crucial thing is how truth is understood. Popper's notion of truth agrees essentially with what is known as the corre-

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spondence theory of truth: A theory is true if it describes how the world really is; and the world is here understood as something already given, as something existing independently of our conceptualizations and epistemological powers. What ground do we then have for believing that a theory gives a true description of this given world, which is only partially open to our inspection. There are criteria for refuting an allegedly true description, viz. when there are logical consequences of the description that clash with what can be observed, but there are immediate criteria for the correctness of a description, and hence, no obvious measure of progress. Popper is aware of this problem and the ensuing difficulty in combating skepticism. His attempted solution is by a notion of corroboration, which has not met general approval and which I shall not deal with here. Kuhn's position is seemingly easier: he gives up the notion of truth and thus rejects the problem. The scientific enterprise can according to him be compared to puzzle solving, and he claims that "later scientific theories are better than the earlier ones for solving puzzles." In this sense science makes progress according to Kuhn. In my view, Kuhn too readily discards the notion of truth. Many human activities can hardly be accounted for without an appeal to the notion of truth. This holds for many of our everyday assertions as well as for many institutionalized activities, like judgments made in court or by technological experts concerning the strength of bridges, for instance. The view that truth has no essential role to play in the institution of science does not seem very convincing. The common spirit has certainly been that the progress in question consisted in discoveries of new truths, in particular truths about not directly observable phenomena serving to explain observed facts. The sad fact is, I think, that philosophy of science has no satisfactory notion of truth which allows us to say that science makes progress with respect to its main aim to give a true account of the world. Many more things need to be said to substantiate this, but I believe that it is the notion of truth rather

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than the notion of progress which needs to be reconsidered. It illustrates anyway how these two notions are intimately connected in philosophy of science and how difficult it is to make philosophical progress with respect to the clarification of such central notions.

4. Progress within Philosophy in General Being a self-reflective activity philosophy has been much concerned also with progress within philosophy itself. Philosophers often regretfully remark that their field has not assumed "den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft", and this is clearly a complaint about what seems to be a lack of steady progress in their field. For an outside observer, philosophy may even seem to resemble the field of fashion: One theory is replaced by another, but then the first theory may come into vogue again, just like the length of skirts goes up and down. In his book Explanation and Understanding, von Wright has commented on this phenomenon. What first seems to be just a change of fashion turns out on closer inspection to contain an element of progress, he remarks. When a type of philosophical theory loses ground because of what seem to be convincing arguments against it provided by a rival theory but then comes back again and regains full support, its supporters may not just be repeating the old theory, forgetful of the arguments against it. What comes back is only the type of philosophical theory that was before, von Wright points out. The old theory has often undergone essential changes so as now to assimilate the criticism directed against it by the rival theory. I think that this is an apt description. Von Wright illustrates his point with the shift back and forth between an hermeneutic and a positivistic view of the social and humanistic sciences during the last century and a half. I would like to add another example from philosophy of language. An influential school born in this century and flourishing in the twenties and thirties was verificationism, according to which the meaning of a sen-

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tence was to be identified with its method of verification or refutation. This idea gradually met great opposition and it was pointed out, for example, that for many meaningful sentences we know neither a method for verification nor a method for refutation. Today verificationism is again a vital theory in analytical philosophy of language. Some people assume that it is the same verificationism from the beginning of the century that passed away after the Second World War, but, on the contrary, an integral part of the new verificationism is just the point that we may have no guarantee of either verifying or refuting a meaningful sentence. To know the meaning of a sentence is therefore according to the new verificationism not to know a method of verifying the sentence but to know what counts as a verification of it. Even in philosophy one may thus talk of some sort of progress. To describe this kind of progress in more detail one must ask about the goal of philosophy, and then of course, one immediately encounters controversial issues. I would say that even in philosophy we aim at saying truths, but no one would think that a correspondence theory of truth is appropriate here. A great part of philosophy is concerned with giving an account of human activities of different kinds: Philosophy of language is concerned with our communications by means of language, logic with our practice of inferences, philosophy of science with our scientific activities, ethics with our moral judgments and so on. One may ask whether the philosophical account is to result in a set of rules that prescribe what is correct to do within these different spheres. For instance, should logic find the general rules of inferences which are to be followed in a correct deduction? In other words, should we say that an individual inference is correct in virtue of being an instance of a general rule of inference? O r is it the other way around? Should we perhaps say that the inference rules only describe an already existing practice of inferences? In that case, we should rather say that it is the general rule of inference

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which is correct in virtue of being a correct description of an already accepted deductive practice. The same kind of question can be raised in all the areas where we speak of rules in a similar way: grammar, science, ethics and so on. It is not certain that the right answer is to choose one of these alternatives. One may try instead to combine them in an appropriate way. John Rawls has suggested that the task of ethics is to find moral principles that accord with our considered ethical judgments in individual cases, but he adds that these principles when found will get their own force and will function prescriptively in many cases. The goal of ethics, as Rawls sees it, is to find what he calls a reflective equilibrium where there is a harmony between our general principles and our judgments in individual cases. To arrive at such an equilibrium we may have to adjust both our general principles and our individual judgments. The same kind of idea has been proposed by Nelson Goodman in the case of logic and philosophy of science. In more general terms we can say that the criterion of correctness suggested here for philosophy is coherence. The aim of philosophy is seen to be a system of general principles that is coherent both in itself and with our considered actual practice, which implies that the system should not just slavishly describe a perhaps incoherent practice but should also serve as a guide to our practice and may even result in a reform of previous practice. I agree with this general analysis, and it is easily seen that it gives rise to a notion of progress. There is in philosophy a growing stock of arguments, different phenomena are linked to each other, and incoherencies are sorted out, while new ones also arise. Progress is in no way guaranteed, but it is something that could be naturally expected as we learn more about how different things hang together.

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5. Progress in Logic If we now turn to the particular field of philosophy that logic constitutes, I think that the general analysis just given applies but that the details look a little different. I shall consider three different kinds of logical research: the studies of logical inferences, axiomatics, and automation of logical procedures. The main and original goal of logic is to give an account of a practice of deductive inferences that to some extent exists independently of that account. The difficulty of this task, however, is not so much to find a coherent system but to find at all some general principles that describe the practice of inferences. When Aristotle founded logic, he immediately hit upon a system of general rules, his syllogisms, which did account for a part of the deductive practice that existed at his time. His achievement is rightly admired, but it is also remarkable that logic made very little progress for over two thousand years after Aristotle, in spite of the fact that Aristotle uncovered only a rather tiny part of the deductive practice existing at his time. There was some development, but the domain of deductive inferences that could be analyzed by logic was not significantly enlarged. The great leap forward was taken in the nineteenth century by Boole and especially by Frege. By successfully analyzing multiple quantification in a system that could handle relations and sentential operations, Frege was able to cover practically all logical inferences that are found within mathematics. Frege's work has been refined in numerous ways, and there have also been additions of logical forms and principles encountered outside mathematics, but the essential progress occurred more or less in one big leap with Frege. Today much work is directed towards analyzing logical structures within natural languages. What is at issue is not so much to find stronger inferential principles. The ones that are already formulated are usually sufficient, but in natural languages there are a great number of different ways to indicate the same logical structure. To systematize them in an intelligible way is a difficult and laborious task. It is a domain in which

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progress is made, but the task will supposedly become more or less finished one day, after which there could not be much progress to be made in this respect. Frege took a big step forward not only with respect to the analysis of logical inference but also with respect to the axiomatization of logic. Even in axiomatics there had been much of a standstill since the time of the Greeks, although Leibniz had prophetic visions about the subject. Euclid's informal axiomatic method is clearly not applicable in logic. It already presupposes a notion of logical consequence: axioms are given and the theorems are what follow logically from them, but how they follow is not further analyzed. Applying the method to logic would thus only lead to a meaningless circle: some logical axioms could be given, but then one would have to say that the other logical truths were the ones that followed logically from the axioms. Frege overcame this difficulty by developing what we today call formal systems or logical calculi, the idea of which had occurred to Leibniz although he never worked it out sufficiently. The idea was to specify not only axioms but also the language in which they were expressed and, in addition, the rules according to which one was allowed to go from the axioms to the theorems. In this way one no longer had to refer to logical intuition for deriving the theorems. This led to the formal axiomatic method, which has then been applied throughout the whole of logic and mathematics. This development also opened the way for investigations of axiomatic systems, often called meta-logic and meta-mathematics. Most logical research today belongs here, and the progress made in these domains during the twentieth century is generally recognized as immense. The character of this progress is essentially of the same kind as that which occurs in mathematics and which we have already discussed. Interestingly enough in this context, some of the logical results in this area may be understood as results concerning the possibility of continued progress in mathematics. I am thinking about Gödel's famous incompleteness theorem. Before this result by Godei one could imagine that it should be possible

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once and for all to state all the principles needed within any specific mathematical theory, such as number theory for instance. It would then only remain to apply these principles. This could be an endless task, but the interesting applications might perhaps be exhausted one day, after which no essential progress would occur. In any case, the theory would be completely fixed and the only thing that remained to be done within the theory was to apply the given principles. This situation was envisaged by David Hilbert for instance, and his school worked hard to bring it about. Gödel's result shows that this situation cannot obtain at all. Already in the case of very simple theories, e.g., the theory of addition and multiplication of integers, it is not possible to state a set of complete principles. For any given set of correct principles for such a theory there are truths within the theory that cannot be proved by those principles. Hence, there will always remain the possibility of further progress consisting in the discovery of new basic principles that are not derivable from the known ones. This is a remarkable, exact result about the theme of our conference. It shows that it is not possible to give an exhaustive description of the truths of most mathematical theories by stating, once and for all, the principles by which they can be obtained, and, hence, that endless progress in characterizing these truths is possible. Admittedly, it is a fairly abstract result, and one may ask how interesting these new principles are likely to be. Several things seem to show however that this interest may be considerable. Some of the new principles that can be added to a given system concern the consistency of the system. Furthermore, the reason why so many open but easily stated problems in e.g. number theory are so difficult to prove may very well be that new principles are required for their solution. The third kind of logical research that I want to consider is the automation of logical procedure. This work can partly be counted as applied research, but it gives rise to theoretical problems, and, as a matter of fact, it started because of theoretical reasons. As I said a moment ago, the logical calculi that

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Frege developed met two requirements: the language of the axiomatic theory was precisely specified and the rules by means of which one was allowed to pass from the axioms to theorems were explicitly stated. The basic idea was to replace the logical intuition (that is normally relied upon when deriving theorems in an informal axiomatic system) by formal inference rules. An inference rule is formally stated when it can be handled by someone who does not understand the meaning of the symbols but manipulates them according to instructions that refer just to their form. This is exactly the kind of manipulation that can be carried out by machines. It follows immediately that the inference rules of a logical calculus can be handled by a machine. Of course, Frege developed his calculi much before the emergence of our computers, but he carried out the essential theoretical work needed to make it possible in principle to let a machine construct proofs; "in principle" means here: when we disregard limits of time and space. As soon as computers became generally available in the fifties, this theoretical possibility was put into practice and several programs for performing automatic deduction were implemented on computers. I was involved in developing one such program, and it could easily prove theorems that occur in logical textbooks; when run on the machines that were then available it proved in 12 seconds that a transitive and irreflexive relation is also asymmetrical. Some people hoped that it would open the way to proving automatically interesting mathematical theorems, but it soon turned out that the methods for automatic theorem proving were hopelessly slow compared to human performance when presented with slightly harder problems. In this respect the situation is still essentially the same, although automatic theorem proving has made great progress since the fifties: computers are useless when it comes to proving really interesting theorems, at least when left to themselves without some heuristic suggestions from humans. The great hope of cognitive science that it would be possible to create artificial intelligence which could match the logical ability of a mathematician thus came to nought, but automatic

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theorem proving has nevertheless become useful. We use logical inferences not only to prove new theorems but also to infer new information from given information; these inferences are often very trivial and we perform them quite automatically, almost without noticing it. For many projects that aim at automatizing routine intellectual work it is therefore essential to be able to imitate this human ability. Automatic theorem proving has been put to very good use in these connections, in particular when many facts are to be handled and a high level of security is demanded. For instance, to show that a security system for trains is constructed in such a way that two trains cannot meet on the same track, it is sufficient, when appropriately formulated, to prove a long but simple formula in propositional logic, the most elementary part of Frege's system, and such things can now be done by computers. One might say with some justification that this application should be counted as a technological rather than a philosophical piece of progress. However, it should be recalled that the development in question is a direct consequence of philosophical ambitions. Frege wanted to show that arithmetic truths are analytic, derivable from logic, thereby refuting Kant's claim that they are synthetic a priori. To establish this point Frege needed full control of the inferences that were used in the purported derivation of arithmetic from logic so that it could be verified that they were of logical character. The kind of calculus that Leibniz had envisaged offered such a control since every inference was then spelled out in formal details. At the same time it carried further the Greek idea of an axiomatic system, which made it applicable even to logic and allowed a full analysis of the logical inferences used in deductive praxis. Finally, it led to Gödel's discovery of the incompleteness of the axiomatic systems, showing it to be impossible to state all the basic principles needed to derive the truths of even quite simple mathematical theorems, thereby demonstrating that the Greek axiomatic ideal can never be fully realized. In a nutshell it illustrates many different kinds of progress that we find in philosophy and in logic, in particular. One can

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hardly summarize them in one formula, varying as they do from technical developments to philosophical insights, fulfilling ancient ideas but also revealing their unexpected limitations - but certainly they constitute true steps forward.

John D. Barrow

Time in the Universe

There is a long-standing philosophical puzzle regarding the nature of time that has emerged in the works of different thinkers over millennia. It reduces to the question of whether time is an absolute background stage on which events are played out but yet remains unaffected by them, or whether it is a secondary concept wholly derivable from physical processes and hence affected by them. If the former picture were adopted then we could talk about the creation of the physical Universe of matter in time. It would be meaningful to discuss what occurred before the creation of the material universe and what might happen after it passed away. Here, time is a transcendent part of reality without a conceivable beginning or end. This idea lends itself readily to the Platonic notion that there exist certain eternal truths or blueprints from which the temporal realities derive their qualities. Indeed, time takes upon itself many of the qualities traditionally associated with a Deity. The alternative, an idea that emerges in Aristotle's writings and in those of the early Islamic natural philosophers, but is stressed most memorably by commentators like Augustine and Philo of Alexandria, is that time is something that comes into being with the Universe. Before the Universe was, there was no time, no concept of before. Such a device enabled the medieval Scholastics to evade difficult conundrums about what took place before the creation of the world and what the Deity was doing in that period. In essence this views time as a derived phenomenon, inextricably bound up with the contents of the Universe. The beginning of time is the moment when

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constants and laws of Nature must come into being readymade and ready to go. In The City of God St Augustine writes: then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time. F o r that which is made in time is made both after and before some time - after that which is past, before that which is future. But none could then be past, for there was no creature, by whose movements its duration could be measured. But simultaneously with time the world was made.

This is close to our common experience of time. We measure time using clocks which are made of matter and which obey laws of Nature. We exploit the existence of periodic motions, whether they be revolutions of the Earth, oscillations of a pendulum or vibrations of a caesium crystal, and the 'ticks' of these clocks define the passage of time for us. We have no everyday meaning to give to the notion of time aside from the process by which it is measured. We might thus defend an operationalist view wherein time is defined by its mode of measurement alone. Whereas on the transcendent view of time we might speak of bodies moving in time, the emphasis of the latter view is upon time being defined by the motion of things. One of the advantages of the first view is that one knows where one stands and what time is always going to look like - it is the same yesterday, today and forever. By contrast the second picture promises to produce novel concepts of time - and might even do away with the concept altogether - as the material contents of the Universe alter their nature under varying conditions. We should be especially conscious of such a possibility as we backtrack towards those moments of extremis in the vicinity of the Big Bang. For any moment that appears to be the beginning of time inevitably exists where the very notion of time itself is likely to be most fragile. In an expanding and constantly changing Universe, the operational view of time is likely to produce a subtle and variable conception of time's place and meaning. The image of a transcendent absolute time shadowing the march of events upon a cosmic billiard table of unending and

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unchanging space was the foundation of Newton's monumental description of the world in which he announces that: I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. O n l y I must observe, that the c o m m o n people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices. 1

Once the equations governing the change of the world in space and time are given, then the whole future course of events is determined by the starting conditions. Time appears superfluous. Everything that is going to happen is programmed into the starting state. (This will not be true if other physical processes become involved. For example, in the archetypal situation of billiard balls moving according to Newton's laws, their future behaviour after collisions depends upon rigidity of the collisions and this involves knowledge of the behaviour of the materials out of which the balls are made. This information is beyond the scope of Newtonian mechanics.) The Newtonian laws of motion could be applied to the description of the world and followed backwards in time. O u r Universe is observed to be expanding and hence a Newtonian description leads to the assertion that there must have been a past moment of time at which everything was compressed to zero size and infinite density - the 'Big Bang' as it was first termed by Fred Hoyle. However, because of the absolute nature of space and time in the Newtonian world-view we cannot draw any conclusions about the Newtonian Big Bang's constituting an origin to time, let alone the origin of the Universe. It is simply a past time at which known laws predict that some physical quantities become unboundedly large; we say they become infinite in value there. But space and time go on regardless.

Isaac N e w t o n , Philosophiae

naturalis

principia

mathematica,

transi. Α.

Motte (1729), edited and revised by F. Cajori, Univ. of California Press, 1934, p. 6.

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The first scientists to contemplate the significance of places where things apparently cease to exist or become infinite 'singularities', as we would now call them - in Newtonian theory were the eighteenth-century scientists Leonhard Euler and Roger Boscovich. They both considered the physical consequences of adopting force-laws for gravitation other than Newton's famous inverse-square law. They found some of the alternatives had the unpleasant feature that the solutions just cease to exist after some definite time in the future when one studied the behaviour of objects orbiting around a central sun. They cannot be continued forwards any further in a world governed by one of these maverick force laws. Boscovich thought it absurd that the body must disappear from the Universe at the centre if the force law were inverse-cube rather than inverse-square. He drew attention to Euler's earlier study of motion under the influence of gravity where the mastermathematician asserts that the moving body on approaching the centre of forces is annihilated. H o w much more reasonable would it be to infer that this law of forces is an impossible one?

These appear to be the first contemplations of such matters in the context of Newtonian mechanics. In fact there are deep problems with attempting to apply Newton's theory of gravity and motion to the Universe as a whole. It will not tolerate the consideration of an infinite space distributed with matter; this leads to an infinite aggregate of gravitational influences at any one point due to the infinite number of gravitational attractions exerted by the others. Therefore a Newtonian Universe must be finite in size and hence possess a boundary in space. If we think of Newtonian space stretching out straight in every direction then this boundary must be a definite edge. For example, if the space is spherical about us at the centre, then the surface of the space is the surface of the sphere. Alternatively, the spatial Universe could be a cube whose boundary was composed of the six faces of the cube. This prospect of a Universe with boundaries

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is a rather unattractive picture because we must specify how all physical quantities behave at these boundaries when the Universe is started at some time in the past. Thus, the Newtonian world requires the Universe of matter to be a finite island in an ocean of infinite absolute space. Worse still, Newton's theory is incomplete. It does not contain enough equations to tell us how all the allowed changes to the Universe actually occur. If the Universe expands or contracts at exactly the same rate in every direction then everything is indeed determined, but when any deviations from perfectly spherical expansion are allowed at the start then determinism breaks down for there are no Newtonian laws which dictate how the shape of the world will change with time. Clearly, Newton's theory of absolute space and time is defective. The next step to take is to contemplate some coupling of the notions of space and time to the material contents of the world. The earliest and most intriguing speculation of this sort was made by William Clifford, an English mathematician who contemplated just the type of situation that Einstein would build into the general theory of relativity. Clifford was motivated by the mathematical investigations of Riemann, who had formalised the geometric study of curved surfaces and spaces which possess non-Euclidean geometry (that is the three interior angles of a triangle no longer add up to 180 degrees where the three corners of the triangle are formed by joining the shortest lines that can be drawn between them to form the sides of the triangle on the curved surface). Clifford appreciated that the traditional space of Euclid is thus one of many and we can no longer assume that the geometry of the real world possesses the simple Euclidean form. The fact that it appears to be flat locally is not persuasive because most curved surfaces appear flat when viewed over small areas. After studying Riemann's ideas, Clifford proposed this radical scenario in his paper of 1876. This prescience is rather remarkable. Although Einstein never seems to have been aware of these remarks, Clifford's

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intuitive idea became the central idea of the general theory of relativity. The geometry of space and the rate of flow of time are no longer absolutely fixed and independent of the material content of space and time. The matter content and its motion determine the geometry and the rate of flow of time, and symbiotically this geometry dictates how matter is to move. Einstein's elegant theory of gravitation possesses a set of equations which dictate the connection between the matter content of the Universe and its space and time geometry. These are called field equations and they generalise the Newtonian field equation of Poisson which encapsulates Newton's inversesquare law of gravitation. In addition to this structure there exist equations of motion which give the analogues of straight lines in the curved geometry. These generalise Newton's laws of motion. One further erosion of time's absolute Newtonian status occurs in Einstein's theory. Einstein's theory was built upon a premise that there are no preferred observers in the Universe: no set of observers for whom all the laws of Nature look simpler. The laws of physics must have the same form for all observers no matter what their state of motion. That is, however your laboratory is moving - whether it is accelerating or rotating with respect to that of your neighbour - you should both find the same laws of physics to hold. You may each measure observables to have different values but you will none the less find them to be linked by the same invariant relationships. In Einstein's world there is no special class of observers for whom, by virtue of their motion and time-keeping arrangements, the laws of Nature look especially simple. This is not true in Newton's formulation of motion. His famous laws of motion are found to hold only by experimenters moving in laboratories that are in uniform, non-rotating motion with respect to each other and with respect to the most distant stars, which he took to establish a state of absolute rest. Other observers who rotate or accelerate in unusual ways will observe the laws of motion to have a different, more complicated form. In particular, and in violation to Newton's famous first law of

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motion, they will observe bodies acted upon by no forces to accelerate. This democracy of observers that Einstein built into the formulation of his general theory of relativity means that there is no preferred cosmic time. Whereas in his special theory of relativity there could exist no absolute standard of time - all time measurements are made relative to the state of motion of the observer - in the general theory of relativity things are different. There are many absolute times in general relativity. In fact, there appears to be an infinite number of possible candidates. For instance, observers around the Universe could use the local mean density or expansion rate of the Universe to coordinate their time-keeping. Unfortunately, none of these absolute times has yet been found to possess a more fundamental status than the others. A good way to view an entire Universe of space and time a 'space-time' - in Einstein's theory is as a stack of spaces (imagine there to be only two dimensions of space rather than three for the sake of visualisation), with each slice in the stack representing the whole universe of space at a different time. The time is a label identifying each slice in the stack. The discussion of the previous paragraph means that we can actually slice up the whole space-time block into a stack of 'time-slices' in many different ways. We could slice through the solid stack at a variety of different angles. This is why it is always more appropriate to talk about space-time rather than the somewhat ambiguous partners space and time. But the connection between matter and space-time geometry means that 'time' can be defined internally by some geometrical property, like the curvature, of each slice and hence in terms of the gravitational field of the matter on the slice which has distorted it from flatness (see Figure 1 for a simple illustration). Thus we begin to see a glimmer of possibility of associating time, including its beginning and its end, with some property of the contents of the Universe and the laws which govern how they change. The new picture of space-time rather than space and time considerably changes our attitude towards initial conditions

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Figure 1: Each of the slices labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4 taken through space can be endowed with a 'time' label that is determined by the radius of the arrowed circle. A s we progress up the curved paraboloidal surface the increase of 'time' is recorded by the increase in the radius of the circle bounding the slice.

and the possible beginning of the Universe. Because of the coupling that exists between the fabric of space-time and matter any singularity in the material content of space-time for example, the infinity in the density of matter which occurs in the traditional picture of the Big Bang - signals that spacetime has come to an end as well. We now have singularities of space and time not merely singularities in space and time. Moreover, any space-time given by Einstein's theory of general relativity is an entire universe. Unlike in Newton's theory, it can never merely describe some object sitting on an external stage of fixed space. Thus the singularities of general relativity are features of the entire universe, not just one place in it or one moment of its history. These singularities mark out the boundary of space and time. If we study the expanding Universe according to this picture and trace its history backwards, then it is possible for it to begin at such a singularity. This prediction has been seized upon by many as proof that the Universe had a beginning in time. However, like any logical deduction this conclusion follows from certain assumptions whose truth needs to be closely

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examined. The most shaky of these assumptions is that gravity is always attractive. O u r modern theories of elementary particles contain many types of particle, and forms of matter, for which this assumption is not true. Indeed, the whole inflationary universe picture which we introduced above is founded upon the requirement that it be not true; for only then can the brief period of accelerated 'inflationary' expansion arise. H o w ever, although the avoidance of a singularity might avoid a beginning to time it would not save us from having to prescribe 'initial' conditions at some past moment to select our actual Universe from the infinity of other possible worlds that begin at singularities. Even if there did exist a singularity, one must face the fact that there are different types of singularity. The specification of the properties of this singularity is an 'initial' condition to be specified on the boundary of our space and time. Some extra ingredient still needs to be found which could provide that specification. General relativity (and any other relativistic theory of gravity which does not possess absolutely fixed space or time) gives rise to another subtle property not present in simple Newtonian conceptions of space and time. There are actually many distinct space-times that can arise from the same initial conditions. Suppose that some space-time S has initial conditions set at some starting time zero which we shall label i(0). We can construct another space-time by removing all of that part of the first space-time that lies to the future of some time t(l) later than i(0) as well as the time i(l) itself. The new space-time, S', is the same as S to the past of the moment i(l) but contains no space or time whatsoever to the future of i(l), as illustrated in Figure 2. But both S and S' arise from the same initial state and, indeed, we could have cut pieces off S in an infinite number of different ways to make other space-times which start from the same initial conditions. Yet there is something unsavoury about S' and its fellow neutered Universes. It comes to an end at the allotted time i(l) for no physical reason whatsoever.

J o h n D . Barrow

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Time • Space

fl

'////////////////////////////////

S

S'

^ W//////////////////////////////A (a)

v//////////////// (b)

Figure 2: Two space-times S and S' which are determined by identical initial conditions on the initial time slice. In (a) the space-time S is maximally extended, whereas in (b) it is terminated at some time t t > but no physical infinity or other barrier to its future continuation arises then. T h e space-time S' is therefore identical to S until the time t,, but does not exist to the future of t r In practice, cosmologists always assume that a given set of initial conditions physically realises the maximally extended space-time and not one of the infinite number of alternatives that are identical to it until some arbitrary moment when they cease to exist.

There is no singularity of any physical quantity. Indeed, we have not even had to make mention of the material contents of the Universe at all. The equations that govern the behaviour of matter would like to predict the future if only you would allow there to be a future. The arbitrary truncation of the future is regarded as unrealistically artificial, and cosmologists choose to exclude its possibility and specify the future evolution uniquely. To do so, it is necessary to introduce a further condition into the prescription of possible space-times, or universes, in theories like general relativity, in addition to the specification of initial conditions and laws of Nature. One requires that the Universe should continue to exist until the laws of Nature governing the behaviour of mass and energy signal that time itself has come to an end at a real physical singularity. Under reasonable conditions it transpires that there is a unique 'biggest' space-time

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which contains all the others starting from the same initial conditions and which is obtained by letting time go forward until the equations predict a singularity. This maximally extended universe is the natural candidate for the space-time that actually arises from a particular set of initial conditions although we should remember that in principle any of the other truncated realities could be the one that exists following the initial conditions of our Universe. If the maximally extended universe is not the extant one, then the end of the Universe of space and time could indeed come at any moment 'like a thief in the night' without any observable cause or warning. Despite all these subtleties regarding the nature of time, general relativity has failed to remove the traditional divide between laws and initial conditions. There is still always an initial slice to our space-time stack which determines what the others will look like. In quantum theory the status of time is an even bigger mystery than it appeared to Newton and Einstein. If it exists in a transcendent way, then it is not one of those quantities subject to the famous Uncertainty Principles of Heisenberg, but if it is defined operationally by other intrinsic aspects of a physical system, then it does suffer indirectly from the restrictions imposed by quantum uncertainty. Accordingly, when one attempts to produce a quantum description of the entire Universe one might anticipate some unusual consequences for time. The most unusual has been the claim that a quantum cosmology permits us to interpret it as a description of a Universe which has been created from nothing. The non-quantum cosmological models of general relativity may begin at a definite past moment of time defined using certain types of clock. The initial conditions which dictate the whole future behaviour of that Universe must be prescribed at that singularity. But in quantum cosmology the notion of time does not appear explicitly. Time is a construct of the matter fields and their configurations. Since we have equations which tell us something about how those configurations change as we look from one slice of space to another it would be superflu-

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ous to have a 'time' as well. This is not altogether different to the way in which a pendulum clock tells you time. The clock hands merely keep a record of how many swings the pendulum makes. There is no need to mention anything called 'time'. Likewise, in the cosmological setting we are labelling the slices in our 'space-time' stack by the matter configuration which creates the intrinsic geometry of each slice. This information about the geometry and material configuration is only available to us probabilistically in quantum theory and it is coded into something which has become known as the wave-function of the Universe, which we shall henceforth call W. The generalisation of Einstein's equations to include quantum theory is one of the great problems of modern physics. One proposed route uses an equation first found by the American physicists John A. Wheeler and Bryce De Witt. The Wheeler-De Witt equation describes the evolution of W. It is an adaptation of Schrödinger's famous equation governing the wave function of ordinary quantum mechanics but with the curved space attributes of general relativity incorporated as well. If we knew the present form of W, it would tell us the probability that the observed Universe would be found to possess certain large-scale features. It is hoped that these probabilities will turn out to be strongly concentrated around particular values in the same way that large everyday things have definite properties despite the microscopic uncertainties of quantum mechanics. If the greatly favoured values were similar to the values observed, then this would give an explanation of those features as a consequence of the fact that ours was one of the most 'probable' of all possible Universes. However, to do this one still requires some initial conditions for the WheelerDe Witt equation: an initial form for the wave function of the Universe. The most useful quantity involved in the manipulation and study of W is the transition function 7yXj,íjJ X^ytJ

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Figure 3: Some paths for space-times whose boundary consists of two three-dimensional spaces of curvature g, and g 2 respectively where the matter fields are prescribed by m, and mv

This gives the probability of finding the Universe in a state labelled by x2 at a time t2 if it was in a state xx at an earlier time £,, where the 'times' can be prescribed by some other attribute of the state of the Universe, for example its average density, (see Figure 3). Of course, in non-quantum physics, the laws of Nature predict a definite future state will arise from a particular past one, and we would not have use for such probabilistic notions. But in quantum physics a future state is determined only as an appropriately weighted sum over all the logically possible paths through space and time that the system could have taken. One of these paths might be the unique one that the non-quantum description would follow. We call this the classical path. In some situations where there exists a conventional deterministic situation, its corresponding quantum description has a transition function that is principally determined by the classical path, leaving the others to combine so as to cancel each other out rather like the peaks and troughs of waves that are out of phase. In fact, it is a deep question whether all possible starting conditions allowed for a quantum universe can give rise to a 'classical' universe when they expand to a large size. This may well turn out to be a very restrictive requirement, one necessary also for the existence of living observers, that marks our

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Universe out as unusual in the set of all possibilities. If this is true then it would also have the interesting consequence that only by a study of its cosmological consequences could a complete appreciation of quantum mechanics be arrived at. In practice W depends upon the configuration of the matter in the Universe on a particular slice through the space stack and upon some internal geometrical property of the slice (like its curvature) which then effectively labels its 'time' uniquely. Again, there is no special choice of geometrical quantity that is elevated above all others in labelling the slices in this way. There are many that will suffice and the Wheeler-De Witt equation then tells you how the wave function at one value of this internally defined time is related to its form at another value of it. When we are close to the classical path these developments of the wave function in internal time are straightforward to interpret as small 'quantum corrections' to ordinary classical physics. But this is not always the case, and when the most probable path is far from the classical one then it becomes increasingly difficult to interpret the quantum evolution as occurring 'in' time in any sense. That is, the collection of space slices that the Wheeler-De Witt equation gives us do not naturally stack to look like a space-time. Nonetheless, the transition functions can still be found. The question of the initial conditions for the wave function now become the quantum analogue of the search for initial conditions. The transition function slots and tx are where we could insert our candidates. We have seen that the transition function Τ tells us about the transition from one configuration of spatial geometry on which the matter has a particular arrangement to another. Let us think of it as T[mvgx·, m2,t2] where m labels the matter configuration and g is some geometrical characteristic of space, like the curvature, which we are using as an internally defined time at two values Ί ' and '2'. We can envisage universes that begin at a single point rather than at an initial space so that their development looks conical rather than cylindrical (as was

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Figure 4: A space-time path whose boundary consists of a curved three-dimensional space of curvature g 2 and a single initial point rather than another threedimensional space. If there is a geometrical or physical infinity at this point then w e cannot calculate the transition probability Τ f r o m this point to the state with curvature g 2 . If this were possible then it w o u l d give the probability of a universe with curvature g 2 arising f r o m a 'point' rather than f r o m 'nothing'.

the case in Figure 3). This is illustrated schematically in Figure 4. Yet this is no great advance in our attempt to transmogrify the idea of initial conditions because the singularity of the non-quantum cosmological models always shows up as a feature of the classical quantum path and in any case we just seem to be picking a particular initial condition, which happens to describe creation from an initial pre-existent point, for no good reason. We have not severed the dualism between laws (represented here by the Wheeler-De Witt equation) and initial conditions. There is a radical path that may now be taken. One should stress that it may well turn out to be empty of any physical significance. It is an article of faith. If we look at Figures 3 and 4, then one sees how the stipulation of an initial condition g, relates to the state of the space further up the tube or the cone at g 2 . Could the boundaries of the configurations at gj and g2 be combined in some way so that they describe a single smooth space which contains no nasty singularities?

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We know of simple possibilities in two dimensions, like the surface of a sphere, which are smooth and free of any singular points. So we might try to conceive of the whole boundary of the four-dimensional space-time to be not gj and g 2 but a single smooth surface in three dimensions. This might be the surface of a sphere living in four space dimensions. One of the curious and attractive features of these smooth surfaces that mathematicians habitually consider regardless of their dimension, and which we can visualise better by returning to the two-dimensional surface of an ordinary sphere, is that they are finite in size but nevertheless have no edge; the surface of the sphere has a finite area (it would only require a finite amount of paint to paint it), but however one moves one never runs into an unusual point like the apex of a cone. We might describe the sphere as being without boundary from the point of view of flat-landers living on its surface. Interestingly, such a configuration can be conceived of for the initial state of the universe (see Figure 5). However - and now comes the radical step - the sphere we are using as an example is a space of three dimensions with a two-dimensional surface as a boundary. But for our quantum boundary we need a three-dimensional space as a boundary. However, this requires that the four-dimensional thing of which it is the boundary be a four-dimensional space and not a four-dimensional space-time, which is what the real Universe has always been assumed to be. Therefore, it is proposed that our ordinary concept of time is transcended in this quantum cosmological setting and becomes like another dimension of space so making three plus one dimensions of space and time into a four-dimensional space. This is not quite as mystical as it might sound because physicists have often carried out this 'change time into space' procedure as a useful trick for doing certain problems in ordinary quantum mechanics, although they did not imagine that time was really like space. At the end of the calculation they just swap back into the usual interpretation of there being one dimension of time and three other qualitatively different dimensions of what we call space.

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Figure 5: A n interesting path is one whose boundary is smoothly rounded off so that it consists of just a single three-dimensional space, and no sharp point at the base as there was in Figure 4. This situation admits of an interpretation as the transition probability f o r creation out of 'nothing' because there is no initial state: there is only a single boundary. This can be used as the picture of the threedimensional boundary of a four-dimensional space-time only if w e suppose that time behaves as if it is another dimension of space.

The radical character of this approach is that it regards time as being truly like space in the ultimate quantum gravitational environment of the Big Bang. As one moves far away from the Beginning of the Universe, so the quantum effects start to interfere in a destructive fashion and the Universe is expected to follow the classical path with greater and greater accuracy. When this happens the conventional notion of time as a distinct concept to that of space begins to crystallise out. Conversely, as one approaches the beginning, the conventional picture of time melts away and become indistinguishable from space as the effects of the boundary condition are felt. This 'No boundary condition' was proposed by James Hartle and Stephen Hawking for aesthetic reasons. It avoids any singularity in the initial state and removes the conventional dualism between laws and initial conditions. This it can achieve if the distinction between space and time is lost. More precisely, the 'No boundary' proposal stipulates that in order to work out the wave-function of the universe we compute it as the weighted aggregate of paths which are restricted to those

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four-dimensional spaces which possess a single finite smooth boundary like the spherical one we have just discussed. The transition probability that this prescription provides for the production of a wave-function with some other matter content m2 in a geometrical configuration g 2 just has the form T[m2,g2J Thus there are no slots corresponding to any 'initial' state characterised by mx and g r Hence, this is often described as giving a picture of 'creation out of nothing' in which Τ gives the probability of a certain type of universe having been created out of nothing. The effect of the 'time becomes space' proposal is that there is no definite moment or point of creation. In more conventional quantum mechanical terms we would say that the universe is the result of a quantum mechanical tunnelling process where it must be interpreted as having tunnelled from nothing at all. Quantum tunnelling processes, which are familiar to physicists and routinely observed, correspond to transitions which do not have a classical path. The overall picture one gets of this type of quantum beginning is that the Wheeler-De Witt equation gives the law of Nature which describes how the wave-function, W, changes. The geometry of the space can be used as a measure of time which looks essentially like the ordinary time of general relativity when one is far from the Big Bang. But as one looks back towards that instant which we would have called the zero of time, the notion of time fades away and ultimately ceases to exist. This type of quantum universe has not always existed; it comes into being just as the classical cosmologies could, but it does not start at a Big Bang where physical quantities are infinite and where further initial conditions need to be specified. In neither case is there any information as to what it may have come into being from. We should stress again that this is a radical proposal. It has two ingredients: the first is the 'time becomes space' proposal; the second is the addition of the 'No boundary' proposal - a single prescription for the state of the Universe which sub-

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sumes the roles of both initial equations and laws of Nature in the traditional picture. Even if one subscribes to the first ingredient there are many choices one could have used instead of the second to specify the state of a Universe which tunnels into existence out of nothing. These would all have required some additional specification of information. The study of the wave-function of the universe is in its infancy. It will undoubtedly change in many ways before it is finished. The 'No boundary' condition leaves much to be desired. It probably contains too little information to describe all the observable features of a real universe containing irregularities like galaxies. It must be supplemented by additional information about the matter fields in the universe and how they distribute themselves. Of course, it may also be complete nonsense! The important lesson for us to draw from it here is the extent to which our traditional dualism regarding initial conditions and laws might be mistaken. It might be an artefact of our experience of a realm of Nature in which quantum effects are small. If a theory of Nature is truly unified then we might expect that it would employ the possibility of keeping time in terms of the material contents of the universe so as to marry together the constituents of Nature with the laws governing their change and the nature of time itself. However, we are still left with a choice as to the boundary condition which should be imposed upon some entity like the wave-function of the universe. No matter how economical its prescription, it is an inescapable fact that the 'No boundary' condition and its various rivals are picked out only for aesthetic reasons. They are not demanded by the internal logical consistency of the quantum universe. The dualistic view that initial conditions are independent of laws of Nature must be reassessed in the case of the initial conditions for the Universe as a whole. If the Universe is unique the only logically consistent possibility - then the initial conditions are unique and become in effect a law of Nature themselves. This is the motivation of those who seek basic principles which might serve to delineate the initial conditions of the

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Universe. If this is truly the case, then it introduces another new ingredient into our thinking about the Universe because it points to a fundamental asymmetry between the past and the future in the make-up of the laws of Nature. On the other hand, if we believe that there are many possible Universes indeed may actually be many possible universes somewhere then initial conditions need have no special status. They could be just as in more mundane physical problems: those defining characteristics that specify one particular actuality from a general class of possibilities. The traditional view that initial conditions are for the theologians and evolution equations for the physicists seems to have been overthrown - at least temporarily. Cosmologists now engage in the study of initial conditions to discover whether there exists a 'law' of initial conditions, of which the 'No boundary' proposal would be just one possible example. This is radical indeed, but perhaps it is not radical enough. It is worrying that so many of the concepts and ideas being used in the modern mathematical description - 'creation out of nothing', 'time coming into being with the Universe' - are just refined images of rather traditional human intuitions and categories of thought. Surely, it is these traditional notions that motivate many of the concepts that are searched for and even found within modern theories that are cast in mathematical form. The 'time becomes space' proposal is the only truly radical element that we cannot detect as the inheritance of past generations of human thinking in philosophical theology. One suspects that a good many more habitual concepts may need to be transformed before the true picture begins to emerge.

Antonio

García-Bellido

Progress in Biological Evolution

I. The Notion of Progress The French Revolution is a symbol of profound changes in our perception of the world around the end of the 18th century. The gain of individual freedom and self-awareness of a second enlightenment conveyed to western man the feeling of superiority. The industrial revolution, geographical and anthropological discoveries of other lands and cultures, the awareness of evolution in the geological, biological and social realms and the sense of history led to the idea of progress. The word progress has positive, optimistic connotations. It conveys the notion of advance to higher accomplishments, towards an attainable utopia, a world of infinite diversity and yet stable despite its complexity, a world developing along a path of deterministic perfection. The bright sky of unending progress, however, starts being clouded by the very analysis of this progress at the end of the 19th century. The second law of thermodynamics put limits to the source of energy and revealed an increasing progress to more disorder: Organisms do not arise spontaneously in decaying flowers, but through the painful effort of procreation and struggle for life; history is not additive and linear, but combinatorial and cyclical. Freedom ends in somebody else's freedom. The feeling of finiteness now taints our vision of the world. Scarcity of resources leads to Malthusian competition. Tigers, whales and forests are finite in number, their preservation requires curbing our ambitions. Truly, the technical and

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conceptual advances in science did increase, but possibly not the mental operations and premises that led to them. Upon reflection, human creativity, from philosophy to art, appears limited in outcome. Thus, the early Greek cosmologists proposed two opposite, actually complementary and still valid, views of nature; either an eternally fluid, changeable world, or an immutable world made of discrete elements and their combinations. The outer world was directly perceivable and analyzable by reason to Aristotle but inaccessible, except for ideal representation, to Plato. Already the Palaeolithic paintings expressed either realistic or abstract-symbolic representations of Nature. Variation and novelty between extreme limits appear by combination of elements, by antagonisms and compromises, or by cyclic returns to the starting point. Occasionally, extrinsic influences generate new combinatorial solutions, like Gambian figures illuminating European Cubism. Finiteness is expressed in the resemblance of myths, as ascriptions of functions to similarly personalized gods in neolithic revolutions, construction of calendars and funerary pyramids, and in separated cultures. Finiteness leads also to regression, advanced democracies can return overnight to tyrannies, figurative painting can be reduced to abstract lines and colors, and Bauhaus rationalism reduced decorative flamboyance to functional minima. Perhaps not surprisingly, the limitations of the human race in generating societies and of individuals in creating communicable goods, as Art, are shared by the natural world in its unconscious evolution. Here too we find limitation to the romantic notion of progress leading from chaos to order and the intellect of man.

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MODULATIONS

ORGANISMS SEGMENTSmSSUES CELLS/ORGANELLES SYNTAGMS/ AGGLOMERATES GENES/PROTEINS MOTIFS/DOMAINS BIOL POLYMERS MOLECULES ATOMS NUCLEAR PARTICLES ELEM. PARTICLES Figure 1 : Organization levels and diversity. Horizontal lines indicate different nodes: combinatorial diversity within each level. Vertical lines connect complexity levels: subset of elements of a lower level operative in the next upper node.

II. Progress in Nature (Fig. 1)

A. Organizational levels and nodes; complexity and diversity In the analysis of the structure and evolution of the natural world, we encounter a series of properties shared by the different phenomenological or organizational levels. For the pur-

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pose of presentation I will distinguish the following "levels": subnuclear, nuclear, atomic, molecular, supramolecular, cellular and organismic level. They correspond to increasing degrees of complexity and appeared in that order in the evolution of the universe. In their structure and process of generation we encounter analogous rules or properties that follow a fractal logic. Phenomenological levels are discontinuous. Any one level results from coalescence or nodulation, i.e., specific mutual interactions between various elements of the lower level. Nodes are syntactic structures, their elements associating in parallel, rather than by cascade addition, forming new functional ensembles. N o t all the elements of any level participate equally or with the same weight in the upper level. In the next higher level, elements retain the interactive properties of their own level but generate new, emergent, properties in combination. Reductionist analysis can reveal their combinational properties; in fact, the properties of elements - their functions - are defined by their interactions. But from the knowledge of the properties of individual elements at one level one cannot predict or deduce the emergent properties resulting from their interactions at a higher level. Causal explanations or predictions cannot be made beyond two or more higher phenomenological levels. This proposition is based on two premises. O n the one hand, there are the difficulties of computation of all possible interactions with predictability being inversely proportional to the number of variables involved. This uncertainty arises both from probabilistic computation and from basic indeterminism. O n the other hand, unpredictibility results from apparently contingent events playing a role in the particular sequence of interactions that generate any observable node. In this historically contingent process it is context which determines ("selects") one out of several possible combinations that subsequently amplify, preventing others from occurring. Events at one nodal level interact with others to generate nodes at the next level. The drive that generates increasingly complex nodes changes in cosmic evolution is decreasing tem-

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perature in the physical and chemical realm and genetic mutation in the biological one. "Complexity " is a relative parameter, but within each level of complexity the abilities of elements to form different combinations define its "diversity". In the following discussion, the notions of space and time are taken to mean co-ordinates or metrics to locate generative events and thus are deprived of their possible value as autonomous operational variables. Space is here defined by its being filled up by structures of different relative dimensions, and time by sequences of events occurring at different rates.

B. The physical realm: the atomic

world

With the expansion of the cosmos after the Big-Bang and with lowered temperature (kinetic energy) mass/energy first nodulates into discrete particles: photons, neutrinos and electrons and six types of quarks. They operate in combinations of two or three, bound by strong short-range forces, i.e., interchanging energy to form leptons, baryons, protons, and neutrons. With further decreasing temperature, protons, mesons and neutrons form atomic nuclei. These elements are bound by less energetic interactions (order of MeV's) than those operating between quarks. Baryons appear in numbers and combinations characteristic of the different atoms. Atomic nuclei carry a net positive charge, and with even lower temperatures they interact with electrons, that provide charge stability, to form atoms. Electrons orbit around the nucleus at different energy levels, the number of electrons bearing a constant numerical relationship to the charge and mass of the particular atomic nucleus. Specificity in atomic structure results f r o m combinatorial, discontinuous solutions. The compensatory attraction/repulsion of the electromagnetic forces operating make all atoms, irrespective of their mass, of similar dimensions, one A in diameter. The long-range forces of gravity, counteracting universe inflation, led to the condensation of matter, forming stars (and

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their planets), black holes, galaxies and super galaxies. Under these high temperature/gravity conditions, atoms are deprived of their electrons and even decay into subnuclear particles. Increasing gravitational condensations and higher temperatures leads to local recapitulation of the primitive expansive conditions as, in the formation of Novas. Thus, the evolution of stars and galaxies alike, are reversible phenomena, examples of progress and regress at the subatomic level. Variety in types of stars and galaxies correspond to diversity in forms within the nucleo/atomic complexity level. Gravity and temperature are then contextual properties that determine the structural status of atoms. Under the conditions extant on the planet Earth we find only about one hundred types of stable atoms. The atomic world can be reduced to its elements, and their functions can be defined by their interactions. However, computational difficulties prevent us from predicting actual solutions, such as the gravitational dynamics of three bodies in space. Furthermore, some atomic phenomena are basically indeterministic, like the spontaneous decay of heavy atoms or the liberation of quanta of energy by photon-excited atoms. The quantum mechanical description of the simple H e atom still defies us. For the same reasons is difficult to predict or infer the specific associations of atoms into molecules that we encounter at the next or higher complexity levels.

C. The Geochemical Realm: the World of Molecules At the low temperature of the Earth's crust, atoms coalesce into molecules, crystals, salts and alloys. Compounds can be reiterations of the same atom or be made of associations between several different atoms, bound by mutual exchanges of their external electrons. Different atoms participate in different proportions in molecules. Combinations of atoms and their permutations generate millions of molecular species. O n our way to the biological realm, we will only discuss here molecules made of different atoms. Molecules in neutral or polar

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solvents have characteristic sizes (of the order of several to hundreds of A) and shapes. Stable molecules are, in principle, neutral in charge but can become chemically reactive in water solutions of ionized salts within limited p H and oxidation/reduction conditions. Chemical reactivity depends on the ionic status of the molecules involved, attracted or repelled by electron exchanges or by weak electrostatic forces in different degrees of energetic transactions, energy levels obviously being temperature dependent. The abundance of molecular species in our terrestrial world relies on their reactivity and energetic context. Their stability (connectivity between atoms) varies with their valence number, i.e., the number of electrons that can be interchanged. Active molecules can then be defined by their mass, charge and shape. In water solutions, electrically neutral molecules are electrostatically polar. The number of fundamental associations between atoms that form molecules is finite. They fall into distinct classes relatively easy to categorize by charge, atomic composition and shape into: acids and bases, sugars, lipids, amino acids, nucleotides and their combinations at higher levels of complexity. Each class has specific reactive properties and thus different capabilities to associate in larger more diverse compounds, via strong (order of eV's) and weak forces. The forces correspond to strong covalent bonds, and to energetically weak hydrogen bonds and ionic and hydrophobic interactions. Clustering of molecules into finite subsets took place spontaneously following the necessary context conditions for their association. These generative conditions can exist in many places in the universe because we find these molecular species in comets and in meteorites and in other stars. Thus the emergent properties in the nodulation of the chemical world seem to be fully explainable by the properties of their constituent elements. These molecules regress to their atomic constituents when the context conditions change.

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D. The world of supramolecular structures (fig. 2a-c) Only certain molecular subsets in the chemical realm are relevant in biological processes. In the terrestrial world most biological molecules are made from light atoms (up to nitrogen) while heavy atoms convey catalytic, ionic or structural binding properties to them. Salts and small molecules intervene in molecular interactions or chemical reactions as ionic exchangers, and in phosphate bonds, as energy accumulators, but do not provide biological specificity. Biological specificity is fundamentally associated with large polymers, made of sugars, lipids, nucleotides and amino-acids. These polymers are linear compounds of molecules covalently bound, the fundamental backbone unit being the tetravalent carbon atom. They can bind to each other by Η-bonds, as in double D N A strands, or by weak electrostatic forces, as in lipids, or fold upon themselves connecting by covalent, Η-bonds or electrostatic forces to generate 3-dimensional structures, as in proteins. Polymerization requires external supply of energy from energy-storage molecules. 3D shapes from linear polymers result from spontaneous folding by matching of shapes and charges of the constituent molecules, usually without external supply of free energy. Folding of polypeptide polymers may give rise to α-helices (with characteristic chiralities), ß-sheets or globular structures. These structures may reach lengths of microns or, in D N A , meters. Shape, charge, polarity and chirality are crucial properties of biological molecules in their associations organising higher-order complexes. Formation of molecular bonds requires free energy and this is provided primarily by photons, breaking simple molecules in reactions that exchange electrons. During the first half of the 4.6 thousand million years of Earth's existence the context conditions were anaerobic and highly reducing, thus early bacteria used sulphur and nitrogen compounds as sources of energy and C 0 2 as building blocks. At about 2 thousand million years ago the Earth atmosphere changed (due to biological activity) to aerobic, oxidative conditions and new types of or-

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ganisms (Cyanobacteria) started using photons to break water molecules, in photosynthetic reactions catalyzed by porphyrin molecules. This process generates highly energetic and stable pyrophosphate bonds which serve as sources for further use in coupling (or decoupling) individual bearing molecules to (or from) each other, in dimers and polymers. These operations are facilitated or catalyzed by specific enzymes that sterically recognize the reacting elements. In the prebiotic world these chemical reactions were carried out in porous materials, clays, with metal ions. In later biological systems the same metals, R N A polynucleotides and small polypeptides (enzymes) acted as catalysts operating on membrane substrates. In these interactions few atoms of the entire molecule intervene, steric matching (shape and charge) being the recognition features that provide specificity to the reaction. These interactions cause in addition conformational changes that permit, as switches, other interactions at other sites of the same molecule (allostery). As we will see again and again, "molecular recognition" is the basis of specificity in all biological processes. In these energetic transactions chemical novelties, i.e., new combinatorial compounds are produced. Still, these reactions are reversible, depending on the relative concentration of substrate and products of the reaction. These chemical transformations correspond therefore to an elementary "transfer of information" from one molecule to another. In the prebiotic world, on Earth (and in meteorites), metals, small polynucleotides and peptides were immersed in an ionic soup that favoured the reiterative synthesis and amplification of their molecular species. Thermal stability and speed of synthesis may have favoured certain molecular species over others. Eventually, out of the possible nucleotide or amino-acid combinations, only certain subsets emerged. Somehow in this "selection" process only certain nucleotides (fundamentally four) and certain amino acids (about twenty) were favoured. Of those only certain chiral forms (L-amino-acids and D sugars) later took part in the biological molecules. It is uncertain whether historical contingency or small energetic differ-

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enees were responsible for this restriction. In the actual world only these chiral forms are recognized by other interacting molecules, contributing to their amplification. If this is the correct explanation, it would constitute an example of how context feeds back on amplification processes. In the recent biological world, transfer of information appears at its most complex in the synthesis of polypeptides. Their biological specificity is based on their characteristic shape, responsible for molecular recognition. We have seen that this 3D organization results from the folding of a linear chain as a direct consequence of the charge of the side chains of individual amino-acids along the linear peptide backbone. This linear chain arose, in turn, from the sequential addition (and peptide bond formation^of specific amino-acids as defined by the corresponding sequence of nucleotides. In such a transfer of information, sets of three nucleotides of a long single-stranded R N A molecule act as a template for individual aminoacids. To that end individual free amino-acids are coupled to small R N A molecules with loops that match triplets of nucleotides of the long R N A (on a substrate of RNA-protein, the ribosomes). In this way a linear sequence of nucleotides in the R N A is "translated" into an amino-acids sequence. But in contrast to enzymatic reactions, translation is not a reversible process due to steric and other context conditions. Probably that RNA-protein process is the primeval one in protein synthesis. In the current world, R N A synthesis occurs by linear matching ("transcription") of one of the two complementary strands of a more stable D N A . The D N A acts as a reserve template which has, in addition, the ability to copy itself by complementary matching of nucleotide sequences, in the process of replication. We do not know how these complicated independent operations came together. It is now believed that in evolution the translational events preceded their coupling to the replicational and transcriptional processes in evolution. In any event, this operational complexity must have resulted from combination and coupling of independent processes. The pressure to develop is certainly a case of Malthusian competi-

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tion, with retention of those that were more prolific, perhaps by being more stable, in a restricted molecular soup. The same contingent historic mechanism may explain the conservation of the genetic code in evolution. Polysaccharides and lipids are terminal products. They are made of a few different elements, and their synthesis results from the activity of enzymes. Both are structurally important: lipids as components of membranes as liquid phase or ionic insulators, and sugars, as polar molecules acting as connectors. Both can be sterically bound to proteins in lipo- and glycoproteins. These proteins serve, along with cytoplasmic proteins and cytoskeleton, to shape ionic and electrostatic landscapes in which other molecules travel to reach their interacting targets. The versatility of proteins, on the other hand, results from the huge number of shapes they can fold into and from the ensuing singularity of their molecular recognitions. Molecular recognition plays a central role in a number of structural and informational transactions. Proteins associate with proteins in stable agglomerates, such as ribosomes, chromosome cores, cytoskeletons, muscle proteins, flagella, etc. They may have more transient interactions, like enzymes with their specific substrates, or as protein complexes in the process of D N A replication or R N A transcription, as gene regulators recognizing specific D N A sequences in gene repression or activation, as receptors of ligands in signal transduction within cells or in cell-cell recognition between adjacent cells. These highly specific interactions between complex molecules must have occurred in evolution through successive rounds of optimization of molecular matching; tending in any step to reduce free energy but maintaining association constants within limits compatible with the reversibility of their associations. The driving force for these evolutionary variations is gene mutation. Mutations are configurational changes that may occur in any molecule, but only those are biologically relevant that, affecting D N A , are amplified in the replication cycles and finally transmitted (by the gametes) to individ-

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uals of the next generation. Thermal or electromagnetic forces can change individual nucleotides and consequently protein efficacy or specificity. These changes have been fundamental for the matching of proteins to their substrates, to proteinprotein or protein-DNA interactions as compensating changes for random mutation in coevolving genes. We now know that mutations in the protein-coding region of genes have played a minor role in later evolution, because the proteins they encode, and consequently their function (i.e., molecular recognition features) are largely conserved in evolution. But D N A strands contain, in addition to protein-coding sequences, adjacent sequences of nucleotides that act as recognition sites for regulating proteins that control next-gene transcription. High D N A turnover, based on errors in replication, D N A unequal recombination or transposition and the activity of mobile elements (viral derivatives) lead to reshuffling of D N A stretches within the genome, and thus to evolutionarily more relevant changes. While transposition of protein-coding regions leads to gene duplication and chimeric genes, these regions remaining in the genomic population, transpositions of regulatory regions bring genes under novel control pathways. In these mutational events, non-functional genes or fractions of genes degenerate by random mutations into nonsense regions, that can amount to important fractions of the genome (the so-called junk D N A ) . Following sexual conjugation two parental strands of D N A with different configurations can recombine, thus generating enormous variation in assortments of genes in the population (genetic polymorphism) as the bases for new genomes and new species. Mutational processes already took place in the R N A world which presumably preceded the D N A one. The self-splicing ability of R N A molecules may have led to enormous amounts of new coding sequences. These small sequences (of the order of dozens of nucleotides) may have encoded small peptides with specific catalytic or molecular recognition features. They correspond to the active domains of actual proteins. However, among this large number of possible sequences we find only

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few simple R N A ( D N A ) motifs and protein domains, from a hundred to a few thousands, as building blocks of all genes (coding and regulatory regions) and their protein products. Genes have evolved by reshuffling of genetic motifs into new combinations, making a large reservoir of polymeric combinations. Thus, in evolved organisms genes usually contain multiple protein-coding domains, and several regulatory sequences. The same mechanisms of D N A turnover generate gene duplications permitting the evolutions of gene/protein families as small modulations of few fundamental motifs/domains. Nonetheless, the differences associated to the observable morphological diversity are encoded by a finite number of genes, increasing only from a few thousands in bacteria to less than one hundred thousand per genome in vertebrates.

E. The cellular world (fig. 2d-f) The next node in ascending complexity is cellularization. Cells are compartmentalized by membranes, liquid phase insulators, made of proteins and lipids. Prokaryotic cells (bacteria) include a cytoplasm with a higher concentration of salts, metabolites and proteins, osmotic pressures, p H and redox potentials different from those of the surrounding medium. They contain chromosomes, ribosomes and other protein complexes. Later in evolution eukaryotic cells appeared containing, in addition, independent DNA-carrying organelles (cell nuclei) with their own membrane, plastids for the specialized photosynthetic or chemosynthetic functions that fix externally provided energy, and mitochondria that carry the specialized functions of respiration or energetic metabolism. Both plastids (retained in plants) and mitochondria contain their own genomic D N A . Comparative D N A sequence analysis suggests that these genomes are similar to those found in bacteria. Thus, the actual eukaryotic cells possibly arose by a mechanism of symbiosis, followed by coadaptation between independent organisms. During this coadaptation, individual genes from mi-

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Figure 2: Molecular levels. A: Representation of shapes (and charges) of protein domains (corresponding to D N A motifs) and their interacting substrata, as in enzyme reactions (arrows). B: Proteins made of aligned domains. C: Association of proteins into protein complexes, as in membranes (with ligands and receptors anchored in them), ribosomes and in transcription-complexes along DNA molecules. D: Hierarchical relationships (arrows) between genes and their products to define syntagms (genetic/developmental operations); Example: regulation of gene

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product A upon transcription of Β and of its products o n gene C and D . E: signal transduction: a ligand (e.g. hormone) activates a receptor in the cell membrane, which in turn, by a cascade of reactions (e.g. phosphorilations), activates nuclear genes. F. Cell-cell interactions via ligand/receptors coupling, release cell division during growth, or cause the cell to enter into terminal differentiation.

tochondria and plastids have moved to the nucleus and vice versa. Plasmids and phages in prokaryotes and viruses or their derivatives (some transposable elements, in eukaryotes) free or integrated in the host genome, possibly have similar origins. They underwent similar coadaptations, being now reduced to a net inventory of genes almost exclusively encoding their polymerases, transposases and protein capsids which allow virions to be released from their hosts. Thus, symbiosis and parasitism are closely related processes, both requiring coadaptation of genetic information. The only driving force for their evolution is mutation and Malthusian expansion. Prokaryotes are genetically the most diverse and abundant organisms on Earth. They dwell in the most extremes of temperature, pH, redox and osmotic conditions, some of which correspond to those of the primitive Earth. Prokaryotic cells may have originated more than 3 thousand million years ago, before the anaerobic/aerobic transition. Eukaryotic cells, on the other hand, have much more constant genomes and restricted habitats. Yet they have evolved into the large variety of complex forms we encounter in Earth. Eukaryotic cells are more recent (1.5 thousand million years), and probably polyphyletic in origin. Multicellular organisms are polyphyletic, multicellularities having developed only 1 thousand million years ago. Multicellularity leads to specialized cell types, more and more diverse along with more complex morphologies. However, even for organisms like mammals with thousands of millions of cells, they group to no more than one hundred cellor histo-types. Discrete cell types can be identified by their specialized gene products, which appear in characteristic sets, as in muscle, dermal, endocrine and nervous cells. Other dif-

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ferences are quantitative ones leading to specialized cell shapes and functions, such as exist between neuronal cell types. Histotypic sets of gene expression patterns are under the control of a few, regulator ("selector") genes. The control exerted by selector genes upon the target genes is mediated by molecular recognition, the selector proteins recognizing D N A regulatory sequences near the coding region of the target genes. The same target genes may be under the control of several selector genes. Thus, gene control can be operationally described as nets of gene interactions. The number of regulatory regions per gene varies, including up to ten or more regulatory sites, some of which can be reiterated to increase the number and affinity of regulatory proteins. As a rule a target gene is transcribed when the combination of activator and repressor proteins sitting on regulatory sites leaves a positive vectoral signal, as happens in the firing of a neurone under both excitatory and inhibitory inputs. Connectivity between genes based on molecular recognition is however limited, resulting in clusters of discrete sets or teams ("syntagms") of genes specialized in particular cell differentiations. However, the majority of expressed genes in proliferating or differentiating cells are common to several cell types. These common genes also operate in teams specific for particular genetic operations, like replication, transcription, cell division, cell-cell recognition, intracellular signalling, sex differentiation and others. The total number of syntagms operating in different developmental processes may not exceed a few hundred. The type and number of genes active in a given cell varies, but excluding those related to energy metabolism, replication and D N A repair and house-keeping function may not exceed 40% of the total in the genome. They act in different combinations in different cells. The combinatorial, parallel, activity of functional syntagms in individual cells define their particular morphogenetic behaviour. Connectivity based on molecular recognition conveys inertia to evolutionary change, i.e., to fixation of mutational variation in the protein coding regions and their regulatory sites.

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The only escape for it is molecular coevolution, reciprocally changing their structure but leaving the interaction or function intact. It is therefore not surprising that both selectors and their target genes and interacting members of the same syntagm are much conserved in evolution. We encounter homologous counterparts of both individual genes and their syntagms in yeast, flies and mammals, performing the same or similar genetic operations.

F. The organismic multicellular world (fig. 3) The most obvious diversification in evolution occurs at the morphological level. Prokaryotic cells had already found ways for efficient exploitation of energy for biosynthesis. These cells explored and found mechanisms for connecting, by molecular recognition, genes and their products to perform specific genetic operations. For many millions of years these mechanisms have remained conserved. The next step in evolutionary novelty was to integrate genetic operations giving rise to multicellular complex morphologies. This process took place in a short period of time. While the more recent Ediacaran (600-550 million years) fossil fauna exhibits simple organisms possibly related to sponges, the Cambrian organisms (525-500 million years ago) already have all the fundamental features of present taxa, with species-specific shapes and sizes, metamerie organization, with appendages and anterior-posterior and dorsoventral heterogeneities, cell differentiation patterns, specialized digestive tracks, respiratory and reproductive systems like modern living organisms. In fact, many of them can be recognized as members of extant phyla. In addition, they probably occupied all possible ecological niches of the marine medium. Establishing phylogenetic relationships between these organisms and the extant ones is difficult when relying on comparative anatomy, but D N A sequence comparisons of extant related organisms indicate that the genetic diversity among their ancestors that gave rise to utterly different and diverse mor-

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A ITERATION

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Figure 3: Segmental (periodic) iterations. In A : of neurons of the left (L) side and their projections in alternating segments and subsegments (shaded) (R: right side). In B: specification of different segments and appendages by combinations of selector genes, acting in all the cells of a territory (A: anterior, P: posterior, D : dorsal, V: ventral).

phologies is small. We do not know how these morphologies arose and evolved, but the developmental genetic study of some of their modern relatives hints at the developmental operations which may have been involved. These seem to be largely invariant for distantly related organisms, such as plants and animals, for which developmental genetic analyses have been carried out in some detail. In multicellular organisms, cell differentiation is tightly coupled with cell proliferation. During early development egg cleavages partition an already highly complex and anisotropic egg cell, with a polarity related to future embryonic axes, a complex cytoskeleton, membrane receptors and heterogeneous distributions of gene products. As a consequence of regular egg cleavages, these heterogeneities become differentially allocated to the resulting cells eliciting differential gene expression, in a constant topographical order. Offspring cells, further separated by branching cell lineages, become orderly apposed to cells of other lineages with whom they interchange molecular signals that promote increasing diversification of patterns

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of gene expression. During proliferation cells are, like eggs, polarized, anisotropic and specified by the subsets of active genes which determine their behaviour. Syntagms, acting in parallel within cells, define genetic operations such as cell-cell specific adhesions and exchange of signals (ligands) that activate membrane receptors. Such signals set-up cascades of protein modifications that ends up in mitoses, changes in cell behaviour, cell adhesivity or cell-cell recognition and determine, cell form, cell migration, axon guidance, tissue invagination or cell condensation and finally terminal cell differentiation. Cells divide into two daughter cells, following replication and equational segregation of their chromosomes and partition of other cell constituents. Therefore, branching of cell lineages is dichotomous, leading to different fates or through cell interactions (independent of lineage) to collaboration in supracellular territories. These territories usually conform to one plane (2D structures) that can either fold into structures by tissue invagination or appendage formation, or divide (delaminate) perpendicular to the original sheet causing 3D structures, as in the nervous system. 3D structures can also result from condensation of free cells as in vertebrate bones. Proliferating cells may remain attached by specific adhesion molecules or be let free to colonize, by migration, settling in specific embryonic territories, like blood cells. During embryogenesis cell proliferation is usually nonhomogeneous but concentrates in growing zones or proliferation centres, meristems in plants, budding zones in arthropods and vertebrates. The latter are metamerie animals which grow along the anterior-posterior or cephalo-caudal axis generating iterated territorial modules, segments. Radial organisms, coelenterates and echinoderms can be considered as circularly metamerie. Those segments are in advanced forms different from each other. The specification of these territories of cells is under the control of selector genes acting in all their cells, determining their behavioural identities. It is remarkable that these genes are conserved and expressed in the same cephalocaudal order in arthropods and vertebrates. These genes diver-

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sified by gene amplification in their ancestors prior to the Cambrian. In fact arthropods and vertebrates are advanced derivatives of the two major pro tosto mie and deuterostomic animal taxa. Selectors are control genes that activate ligands and receptors to communicate their information (as spatial co-ordinators) to neighbouring cells, thus specifying constant sized, bounded territories. They are expressed in a temporal cephalo-caudal sequence spatially. They operate in combinations, overlapping in part their topographical expression, their anterior borders of expression defining the borders of presumptive segmental borders. The extension of these segments is of few cells in width first but expands later by proliferation to many more. The territorial boundaries of selector expression are, in arthropods, maintained by cell lineage restrictions: cells between neighbouring territories not mixing because of cell recognition differences defined by target genes of the corresponding selectors. The (anterior) boundaries of selector expression become first defined by expression patterns of earlier acting genes in embryos with still less cells. And later on, along with further cell proliferation, segments become subdivided into smaller territories by clonal restrictions, defining more detailed patterned structures. Thus, cephalo-caudal patterning and specification result from sequential appearance of boundaries of gene expression that periodically subdivide the increasing cell population as it reaches sizes corresponding to the specification of new territorial (selector) genes. The appearance of subsequent new gene expressions is known to occur in Drosophila by activation/repression of genes of the previous territorial subdivision. All periodic territorial subdivisions have at the start similar and small periods in number of cells, but new periodicities (boundaries of gene expression) arise when cell number increases. The dorso-ventral axis in arthropods and vertebrates is subdivided into bands of different histotypes, ectodermal, nervous and mesodermal tissues. Appendages appear in the ectoderm in most segments of arthropods and specifically in thoracic and lumbar positions in vertebrates. Their specification is

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again defined by combinatorials of specific selector genes. Appendages are outgrowths resulting from cell proliferation in a cone or cylinder perpendicular to the body axes. Possibly subsequent proximo-dorsal appendage subdivisions result from periodical patterns of gene expression and their subdivisions in different territories as in cephalo-caudal segmentation. Mesodermal cells grow into the blastula cavity in the process of gastrulation. Neural cells invaginate along a furrow in vertebrates or internally delaminate in arthropods to give rise to 3D structures. These histotypic territories differentiate segmental structures specified by the same cephalo-caudally acting selector genes. Again homologous genes are known, that specify the same processes in both animal groups. Other internal organs result from segmental outgrowths or ingrowths of ectoderm or endoderm, within body walls. Final appendages and organs, as well as embryonic segments have a species-specific size and shape. We do not know how this 2D size-shape control is exerted but territorial discontinuities in gene expression and clonal boundaries seem to play a crucial role, as sources of morphogens (ligand growth factors) or by defining values of gene expressions (in 2 axes) computable by neighbouring cells and leading to intercalary cell proliferation. The capacity of cells to compute positional gene expression values and to generate them by cell proliferation is the base for the "characteristic ability of living beings" (Driesch) to regenerate missing parts. In fact, this is the normal mechanism in the generation of segments from a thoracic region in annelids and primitive insects. Patterned single cell differentiation in early or late embryonic territories to form glands or sensory elements, hairs and feathers, possibly result from computation of these local axial positional values while the territory is engaged in proliferation. These computations result from cell-cell signalling of quantitative differences defined by amounts of products, as ligands and as receptors, in some cases of known conserved genes. Any cell in an organism can thus be identified by a long specification code which includes the active genes that have been involved

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in the generation of its ancestry and a quantitative value defining its position within the closest gene expression boundaries. Long- (segments), medium- (appendages) and short- (cell patterns) range periodicities in patterns of most species are old evolutionary discoveries and are mediated by different genes and different genetic operations. They must have evolved in parallel, since they are developmentally independent. Spatial heterogeneities may have arisen by local modifications to primitive, more regular, homogeneously iterated, patterns.

G. Evolution (fig. 4) Progress in development corresponds to an ordered diversification, a programmed iterated performance; species development appearing as an idiosyncratic algorithm to deploy through gene interactions the information contained in their genomes. Progress in evolution, by contrast, results f r o m random mutational variation, mainly leading to changes in developmental algorithms and new combinatorial outcomes that become stabilized in new species. Thus, evolution corresponds to a branching expansion in diversity, rather than a linear continuous increase in complexity. In fact, along with evolution diversity increases; the number of known species is, as in the case of molecular species, of the order of millions (more than 20 solely in extant members of the kingdom Animalia). N e w species appear replacing previous ones or in addition to them, slowly or in explosive radiations. Similarly, species become extinct (on the average after 5 million years) singly or collectively because of ecological catastrophes, the latter event opening biological space for new evolutionary radiations. But also during evolution, the variation of biological organization increased. This increase is associated with an increase in interactions between independent elements, or of degrees of freedom between generative components. Mutational contingency and context complexity make evolution unpredictable - and irreversible because of the low probability of an ordered series of

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EVOLUTION Figure 4: Operative syntagms in development and evolution (within a given taxon). Four different syntagms are active in different combinations in different cells along different lineages. They remain, however, the same throughout evolution. The scheme displays a phylogenetic trend of syntagms to operate earlier and earlier in development (heterochrony).

back-mutation of the genetic variants in concomitantly reversed contexts. In this sense evolution is a historical process. But as such we can still discover some generative rules. Overtly different morphologies have varied and diversified in evolution to a larger extent than the genetic changes which accompany this variation. In fact, in a growing number of instances genes of any hierarchical level can be exchanged (transgenics) between distantly related organisms, animal and plants, where they replace each other performing the same functions. (In some cases operative teams of genes, syntagms, are known also to be conserved). The limitation in the number of genes and the conservation of their structure and function suggest that morphological variations are combinatorial in nature and extensive. Morphogenesis appears as a kaleidoscope of combinatorial solutions which become stabilized in different ways in the particular species; territories of gene expression conforming to spatio/temporal mosaics in any particular species. The independence of the genetic operations leading to heterotopic diversity during development allows for mosaic modification in evolution. Any level or stage of development (egg cleavage, gastrulation, embryonic and larval stages) can be in-

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dependency modified or (in parasitic forms, direct vs. metamorphic development) even suppressed. The versatility of those combinations is especially apparent in heteromorphic species where the same genome directs the development of several distinct larval and adult stages, of completely different individuals as in polyps and meduses, of castes of individuals (even parthenogenetic) in social species or to sex reversals in organisms as complex as frogs. Many of these metamorphic changes are mediated by release of hormones (as temporal co-ordinators) received by genetically specified competent cells. Heteromorphism is just an extreme example of the generation of regional heterotopics during development of the same individual. Changes in gene expression patterns along the time axes (heterochronies) permit the appearance of neotenic forms, where juveniles become sexually mature, permit changes earlier in development and so permit larger evolutionary changes. Parasitic forms represent regression of complexity by suppression of entire developmental programs. H o w does this morphogenetic versatility come about? Certainly the primary causes are mutational changes. If coding regions of genes are conserved, a large heterotopic and heterochronic variation can come about by changes in the regulatory regions of genes. They operate on already long tested genetic operations, changing only their association in, or dissociation from, the same cell, shifting along cell lineages. N e w combinatorial propositions will be maintained, and new species will arise if the morphological outcome is compatible with the genomic change permitting enough fertile progeny. The "adaptive" issue then becomes: what is the "structure" of the context that "selects" new morphologies? As it happens, ecological niches and habitats do not exist on their own, but are defined by the organisms that occupy them. In fact, different animal taxa have developed analogous (convergent) structures and behaviour in different media, reptiles and mammals flying or dwelling in the oceans, terrestrial marsupials and mammals duplicating species by species the same feeding strategies. Therefore the adaptive issue should be restated as:

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how much tolerance exists in the external world to permit to morphological innovation? The rapid transformation of reptiles to birds, of birds to penguins and of mammals like mice to bats, or cows to whales, occurring within time lapses of 50 million years, and encompassing dramatic physiological, anatomical and behavioural changes, suggests that tolerance for intermediate (unadapted or adapting) forms is large. Possibly tolerance to new morphologies in the Cambrian was even larger, and the "adaptive" processes leading to symbiosis and parasitism faster. If tolerance to genetic variation for diverse morphologies is large, then "internal" genetic propositions become more relevant than the supposed "external" structure involved with natural selection, and "adaptation" thus becomes an anthropomorphic qualification which only denotes existence.

III. Recapitulation The observable world contains a variety of microscopic and macroscopic entities that structurally can be ordered in organizational levels. These are discontinuous and capable of performing level specific operations. In this increase of complexity higher levels seem to result from the nodulation of subsets of lower nodes. It is in this sense that molecules derive from atoms and these from elementary particles. In this evolution decreasing temperature/gravity has permitted increasingly complex structures. In the interface between molecules and living cells, particular forms, macromolecules, have taken the role of providing specificity for a multiplicity of chemical interactions. The wealth of the variation is thus the result of a large, but finite, number of combinatorial interactions. The organization level of multicellular organisms is constrainted by the finiteness of interacting motifs ( D N A , R N A sequences and protein) and the inertia to change partners in their interactions. Mutation, giving rise to new associations of these motifs, provides for variation. This variation is combinatorial in nature

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increasing the diversity parameter, but leaving the complexity parameter more or less constant. If the mutational driving force is unpredictable and only checked by the tolerance of the context, evolution is merely an expanding process of diversification, like that giving rise to galaxies and chemical species. It is only as seen from the end result that we get the illusion of a teleological trend to progress. Beyond organismic morphologies, interaction between organisms of the same species generate colonies and communities, as next more complex nodes, related by languages of odours and sounds in their interactive transactions. And at an even higher level different organismic species interact in ecosystems exchanging and recycling energetic resources. Combinatorial nodes and diversifications are perhaps the only objective properties that we can associate with an idea of Progress in an expanding Universe.

Gereon

Wolters

The Idea of Progress in Evolutionary Biology: Philosophical Considerations 1

I. A Formal Characterization of the Concept of Progress From Plato's dialogues we know that there is little hope of arriving at completely satisfying definitions. But definitional aporia does not warrant the advice to do completely without conceptual clarifications. To the contrary, making one's concepts clear is an important task of philosophy, maybe even the central one. One of the those concepts that are in need of clarification is the concept of progress. 'Progress' may be predicated of very different objects or types of objects: theories, situations, institutions, epochs, devices, abilities, organisms or types. For simplicity I will refer to such things as 'phenomena'. Phenomena are never progressive as such, but only with respect to at least one feature that seems 'positive', 'desirable', or 'better' to somebody for some reason. 'Progress' means that this feature or these features, respectively, increase quantitatively or qualitatively. Other characteristics of the same phenomenon, desirable ones included, may remain constant or even diminish. In this sense we may talk, for example, of theoretical progress, meaning an improvement of theories with respect to, say, unifying power, range, or empirical content. Or we might speak of progress in the speed of air travel. Or we speak of progress with respect to the processes of political and eco-

The author thanks Dr. Peter McLaughlin for helpful criticism.

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nomic integration in Europe, or of phylogenetic progress, whatever that is. Sometimes one speaks of progress also, when the development is in the negative direction: progressive illnesses, for example. Progressive phenomena Pi of one specific type form a sequence. This sequence is ordered in a twofold way, first temporally and then according to the degree of quality or quantity of the feature with respect to which one speaks of progress. Hence for progress a temporal succession is required of ever better or bigger phenomena. I would like call sequences of that sort 'progress classes'. Next I would like to distinguish weak and strong progress classes.2 In the case of weak progress the second criterion of 'progress' does not hold, i.e., the continuous increase of the progressive feature in question. There may be phenomena of the type under consideration that fail to be progressive. Take, for example, moles or bats with respect to their mammalian predecessors and according to their optical apparatus. One sees immediately that moles or bats in that respect clearly represent not progress, but regress. But one may still speak of 'progress' with respect to the feature 'optical apparatus' among mammals compared to, say, fish or reptiles. What is required for weak progress is that one sees an average advancement. In the language of classes one can say that a weak progress class is a proper subset of the corresponding time ordered type class, i.e., the class that orders a phenomenon only with respect to its successive stages, not taking into account 'favorable' developments of some sort. Weak progress classes represent an overall or net progress, i.e., a progress that is punctuated by occasional setbacks. The setback phenomena are elements of the corresponding type class, but not of the respective progress class. Take as an example 'ground transportation with respect to speed': there exists certainly a net progress leading from, say, carts to Ferrari cars. This corresponds to Ayala's distinction between 'uniform' and 'net' progress in his excellent paper on the definition of progress in biology (Ayala,1988, p. 79).

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But the arrival on the scene of automobiles in the late 19th century meant a setback at that time as railroad trains were much faster, and remained so for decades. O r consider solarmobiles; they are 'snails' compared to 'real' cars. But on the whole, nobody would deny that there is a true and so to speak measurable progress class 'ground transportation with respect to speed'. An example of an alleged strong progress class comes from the popularizing fringes of evolutionary biology. In a book, reprinted many times with the title Vom Bazillus zum Affenmenschen (From Microbes to Ape-Man) Wilhelm Bîlsche (1861-1939), a great admirer of Darwin's German bulldog, Ernst Haeckel, characterizes the core of Darwinism as follows: The whole Darwinian line of argumentation proves the development of higher forms from lower ones. Man is higher than the reptile, the fish or the w o r m . In the fossil record one finds low and high as represented in historical succession. 3

According to that view man is the final element in a strong and universal progress class 'phylogenetic descent'. Strong progress classes encompass all phenomena of a certain type. Therefore strong progress classes are linearly ordered sets. This means that for every two phenomena of the type under consideration it holds that the later represents progress with respect to the earlier. I would like to call progress classes with a final element, such as the one just described, purposive progress classes and speak in these cases of purposive progress. This leads to a second distinction in addition to the one between strong and weak progress classes. Progress classes may be universal or particular. Universal progress classes contain the entire sequence of phenomena of a certain type, from the first through the last. Particular progress classes are content with a particular stretch of the sequence of the phenomena in question. There do not seem to be many examples of strong

3

Bîlsche 1906, p. 7.

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and at the same time universal progress classes. Iii our world setbacks are lurking almost everywhere. As is clear from what has been said so far, progress is not a monadic predicate. That means, we cannot simply say of a phenomenon Pn that is progressive. Rather one has to distinguish two basic cases. Case (1), the simple case, refers a phenomenon Pn to at least one preceding phenomenon Pm of the same progress class compared to which Pn shows an increase of 'positive' characteristics Ci (at least one) shared with Pm. In this sense homo sapiens sapiens is a progress compared to the chimpanzees with respect to brain size, intellectual functions, adaptive abilities, and the like, whereas humans are a step backward as far as, for example, climbing on trees is concerned. But notice that choosing a feature as 'positive' or 'important' implies a value judgement. So an irreducibly subjective factor comes in. But, as we will see later, 'subjective' does not necessarily mean 'arbitrary'. Case (2), the complex case, is more complicated, naturally. It aims at a more comprehensive concept of progress for the phenomena of a certain progress class. It involves, of course, more weighting and evaluating. Here we refer a phenomenon Pn to at least one preceding phenomenon Pm of the same progress class compared to which Pn is progressive with respect to 'positive' characteristics Cni (at least one) that outweigh 'neutral' or 'negative' properties Cm(at least one) common to both phenomena. Take, for example, comfort and speed as two characteristics for a progress class 'ease of traveling'. Then, a train ride from Zurich to Moscow represents a progress compared to a stagecoach trip both with respect to comfort and to travel time. But sometimes one has to introduce some weighting of the characteristics in question. So, for example, sitting in the economy class of an airplane is less comfortable than sitting in a first class railroad compartment. But what seems to be a disadvantage at first sight, is clearly outweighed by the fact that one is exposed only a short time to the uncomfortable effects of aircraft seats. O n balance, therefore, traveling by aircraft to Moscow may be regarded as a progress in ease of traveling, compared to railroad travel.

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This result may change again, if there are contained in one's progress class 'traveling' additional characteristics and new evaluations and weightings, e.g. valuing very highly the possibility of seeing as much as possible of the countryside between Moscow and Zurich. To make a long logical story short: Progress or progressive are relational predicates, at least 'triadic' or three-place. They are predicated of a phenomenon Pn with respect to a preceding situation Pm of the same progress class Σ according to at least one characteristic C shared by the phenomena that form the progress class Σ. Choosing the characteristics involves value statements about what is a decisive, desirable, or important feature of the phenomena under consideration. Logically speaking, the use of words like 'progress' means ordering phenomena into progress classes. In biology or natural history, as ordering of natural variety was called until the end of the last century, this amounts to ordering the organismic variety into progress classes. Before touching on evolutionary biology I would like to offer a quick look into the pre-Darwinan history of that discipline.

II. Progress in Pre-Darwinian Biology: The Concept of a scala naturae There was an obsession for perfection of natural beings in pre-Darwinian natural history. 4 It centered around the idea of a scala naturae or Great Chain of Being. But perfection does not necessarily mean progress, as we will see presently. The idea of the scala naturae reached its peak in the work of the Genevan naturalist, Charles Bonnet (1720-1793). Bonnet de-

4

O n e may study that obsession in the most praised book I k n o w of in the history of ideas: Arthur O . Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being: A study of the History of an Idea (Harvard Univ. Press 1936). In this book Lovejoy gives an analysis and an overview of the attempts to give a strong progress class for all natural beings, inanimate as well as animate.

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veloped the idea of an 'échelle des êtres naturelles'5. Each and every type of natural being has its place in a continuous and ever more perfect ordering of things, given to it by God at creation. The universe as a whole is so to speak a strong and strictly continuous perfection class. At the bottom one finds 'matières plus subtiles' and at the end there is 'l'homme', preceded by the orangoutang. The ordering point of view is the degree of organization. Bonnet does not hesitate to give a definition of 'degree of organization': Perfection in machines of nature is measured in the same way as in those of art by the number of parts and by the diversity of their effects. That which produces a greater number of effects with the fewest parts is the most perfect.6

But note that the dimension of perfection in Bonnet is not time, but space. That is to say that there is a strong, but static perfection vector in nature, but no dynamics that drives one phenomenon to the next, more perfect one. There is no progress of natural beings in time. All natural beings are part of a superclass that is ordered with respect to the perfection of these beings, but not with respect to time, because all beings were created practically at once. Hence this superclass is no progress class, because it lacks temporal ordering. Only in his last work, the Palingénésie philosophique ou idées sur l'état passé et sur l'état futur des êtres vivans,7 is perfection temporalized to become progress, but in a very special way. Man, animals and also plants are, according to Bon-

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In the first volume of the 8 volume edition, (Neuchatel, 1779-1783) Bonnet supplies a figure that sketches his 'échelle des êtres naturels' (see fig. 1). "La perfection dans les Machines de la Nature, se mesure, comme dans celles de l'Art, par le nombre des pieces, & par la diversité des effets. Celle là est la plus parfaite, qui avec le moins de pieces, produit un grand nombre d'effets." ( C o n t e m p l a t i o n de la nature III, 14, in Oeuvres, vol. IV, 1781, p. 73). Bonnet 1770.

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net, 'mixed' beings. 8 They consist of material bodies and of immaterial, and thus immortal, souls. The world of bodies is governed by the laws of mechanics, whereas the realm of the souls is spiritual. 9 Here the laws of natural science do not apply. In this realm perfection is possible. We cannot make our bodies more perfect, but we can and must work on the perfection of our souls. In this basically Leibnizian scheme the dynamics of progress, and thus time, comes in from the spiritual side. But time in the realm of grace is different from ordinary time. 10 For 'mixed' beings like animals and plants, not only their souls are immortal, but also the 'ethereal', but nonetheless corporeal, seat of the soul, that consists of some sort of subtle matter. It is indestructible and consists of the germs of future incorporations of that soul. 11 Future here means: in future epochs of the sort that began with the biblical Flood and will end with the Last Judgment. 1 2 At that point the immortal souls of all living beings will be resurrected, as will their former seats that now become the germs of new bodies, and so direct cor-

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Bonnet at this point does not care any more about the inanimate steps of the scala naturae. Note his clear divergence from the Cartesian view of things, according to which only man has an immortal soul, whereas animals are machines. Both realms possess their own methodologies. An excellent exposition of the differences as well as interactions between these two methodologies is found in Butts 1984. This aspect was not recognised clearly enough by Lovejoy, who saw already with Bonnet a temporalisation of the chain of being. " L e petit Corps organique & indestructible, vrai Siege de l'Ame & logé dès le commencement dans le corps grossier & destructible, conservera l'Animal & la Personalité de l'Animal" (Palingénésie 1,1, in Oeuvres, vol. VII, p. 119). " L e grand Apôtre des Hébraux (Seconde Ep 111.10,11,12 ) nous annonce une révolution future dont le feu sera le principal agent & qui donnera à notre Monde une nouvelle face. Il sera, en quelque sorte, créé de nouveau & cette nouvelle Création y introduira un nouvel Ordre de Choses, tout différent de celui que nous contemplons à présent." (Palingénésie 1,2 in: Oeuvres, vol. VII, p. 122)

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poreal resurrection, thus securing also some physical identity of the resurrected being with its former physical state.13 Perfection of the soul in the present state of creation, particularly with respect to sensations, has a positive effect on the ethereal germ-preformations of the future body, and at the same time Bonnet was convinced that the sequence of cosmic epochs itself is progressive. Thus real progress of living beings comes into sight, but only in spiritual time, as it were, i.e. in the next eon.14 Bonnet believed that all types of living beings have the potential of slowly, but continuously moving upward towards the next step of the scala naturae. This step of the scale, in turn, has been left by its previous occupants in order to move towards their next step. The important point to notice here is that also in the future life no new biological forms appear. Living beings move to higher forms that have already existed in the bygone age. They only occupy a place in the order of nature that has been left by its former tenants. In the state of things that is to come in the indefinite future, the scala naturae, thus, will become an intermittently-moving escalator that stops at each step for an eon. It will, for example, transport man towards angel like perfection, and - as Bonnet foresees: Man thus transported to another place more suitable to the eminence of his abilities will leave his first place among the animals of our planet to the ape or to the elephant. In this universal restitution of animals, thus, one will find N e w t o n s and Leibnizs among the apes or elephants and Perraults

and

Vaubans among the beavers. 15

13

This seems to distinguish Bonnet from Pierre Louis de

Maupertuis

( 1 6 9 8 - 1 7 5 9 ) w h o also envisaged cosmic catastrophes, but seemed to believe in breaks of the continuity of the Great Chain of Being and completely new living beings resulting from these events (cf. Crombie 1994, p. 1440). 14

T h e first to think in terms of 'real' time of organismic progress seems to have been Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck ( 1 7 4 4 - 1 8 2 9 ) in the first theory of evolution proper.

15

L ' H o m m e , transporté alors dans un autre séjour plus assorti à Imminence de ses Facultés, laissera au Singe ou a l'éléphant cette premier place qu'il occupoit parmis les Animaux de notre Planete. Dans cette Restitution universelle des Animaux il pouvra donc se trouver chez les Singes ou les

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Needless to say, this sort of pious progressionism is outside the range of empirical confirmability or testability. But there were other more earthly, more scientific problems. In later years Bonnet asked himself with respect to various examples: "Could it be possible that the scala naturae branches on its way up?" 16 Bonnet now obviously had doubts about nature as a universal perfection class. He envisaged the possibility of a multiplicity of particular perfection classes that may not form one encompassing superclass. This idea will return with respect to evolutionary progress classes in modern biology.

III. Progress in evolutionary biology The hard core of evolutionary biology is easily characterized. It boils down to two factors: genetic variation and natural selection. (A) There exists genetic variation in populations. Therefore, apart from some exceptions, all organisms of a particular population can be distinguished with respect to heritable morphological, physiological and ethological characteristics. (B) Different characteristics imply differential adaptations to the environment. The 'better' adapted organism have a greater probability of surviving and reproducing than their less gifted or less fit fellow population members. Thus Nature selects the better adapted, or fitter ones to transmit their genetic equipment into the next generation, at the cost of the less fitter ones. Hence, evolution consists in changes of populations towards better adaptations to their respective environments. As one can see from this characterization of a Darwinian evolutionary theory, evolutionary progress classes, if they exist at all, consist not of individual organisms, but of groups like

éléphants des Newton & des Leibnitz; chez les Castors, des Perrault & des Vauban, etc." (Paligénésie 111,3, in Oeuvres, vol. VII, p. 150 ). 16

"L'Echelle de la Nature se ramifieroit-elle en s'élevant?" de la nature 111,20, in: Oeuvres, vol. IV, p. 89).

(Contemplation

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populations, species, and also higher taxa. These phenomena are thought of as genealogically coherent. Notice that change generally does not imply progress. This is already true for much of everyday life, at least in the conservative perspective. Already for conceptual reasons this is also true for evolution. Adaptation to changing environmental conditions is a function of these conditions. There is no universal directed change or trend towards the better on a geological scale. Hence, there can also be no universal progressive trend in adaptation and evolution. To account for this diversity and non directionality of evolution the fitting term 'adaptive radiation' has been introduced. Although there does not exist a universal evolutionary trend, there are, in fact, minor ones. Minor here is understood on a geological time scale. Trends of that sort seem to presuppose relatively stable environmental conditions. One generation's fitness can be the decline or even destruction of the next, if the environment changes in a way that renders earlier adaptations useless or even harmful. On a geological time scale environmental change and the failure of organisms to adapt to it is the rule. Paleontological estimates say that about 9 5 % of all species that have ever existed have died out. That means that most evolutionary change has led to extinction, which can hardly be regarded as progress, at least for the species becoming extinct. Thus, also from an observational, empirical point of view progress has not been a universal feature of evolution. Only in small sections of the geological scale that correspond to particular evolutionary lines may one find periods in which at least some species or higher taxon increase their adaptations and, thus, their fitness. But this is a rather abstract statement. Because fitness is a so called supervenient concept which means that fitness does not say anything about its concrete material realization in organisms. There are as many fitnesses as there are species. Increase of fitness may even consist in losing organs and functions that are not needed any more. Moles and bats are examples. The realm of parasites is another.

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To be called 'progress' a directed change or trend must be evaluated as being for the better in some sense. But what 'better' means, is everything but clear. Francisco Ayala, an eminent geneticist, has the following idea: "'Better' may simply mean more efficient, more abundant, or more complex" (1988, 78). These concepts are not very clear either. One cannot see why the sequence of toes from five to one in the evolution of horses is a trend to the better, i.e. a progress. And, if you put rats, primates and humans into a progress class with respect to complexity and efficiency of their cognitive apparatus, the ranking would probably be: rat - primate - human. But primates are endangered species, whereas rats and humans are flourishing. In the long run, probably rats will outdo even us, although we and the other primates are clearly the 'better' ones. That means, the criteria of being better and thus, progressive may easily point into opposite directions. By now, it should have become clear that calling an evolutionary trend progressive, adds nothing to our biological knowledge. Hence, evolutionary theory should confine itself to studying evolutionary trends, whatever their direction may be. Trends, once identified, give evolutionary biology the interesting job of explaining, why they have occurred. Doing that job leads to exciting interplays of different disciplines as geology, physics, ecology and so on for the environmental part, and of disciplines like developmental biology and physiology for the organismic part. Ayala's criteria for the evolutionary better have been enlarged considerably by other evolutionary theorists. Among those criteria are dominance, invasion in new environments, replacement, improvement in adaptation, increased specialization, control over the environment, increased structural complexity, increase in general energy or level of vital processes, and increase in the range and variety of adjustments to the environment.17 Ayala, who has addressed the problem of pro-

17

Cf. Ayala 1988, p. 89f.

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gress in evolution many times in his writings and has contributed much to conceptual clarification, has a favorite among them: it is "increase in the ability of organisms to obtain and process information about the environment" with man at the peak. I am afraid, this criterion cannot withstand objections mentioned earlier. In Ayala's writings, as well in those of other evolutionary theorists, one finds an ambiguity with respect to 'progress' that one already finds with Darwin. In his Notebooks Darwin exhorted himself to "never say 'higher' or 'lower'", i.e. to keep value statements out of science. But in the Origin 18 as well as in his later writings one finds him speaking of 'progress', although this basically is at variance with the principles of his theory. Darwin's ambiguity consists in introducing a value laden concept such as 'progress' into empirical science. Darwin himself, in principle, made a clear distinction between values and facts. The latter he took not to be suitable ingredients of empirical science. Ayala sees things in the same vain. He is even more explicit: If one deprives 'progress' of its axiological, evaluating component, there remains directional change. This is not an axiological concept and, thus, it may be treated as other than a strictly scientific term. If the term 'progress' were to be completely obliterated from scientific discourse, I would be quite pleased; but it seems unlikely to happen. The notion of progress seems to be irrevocably ingrained among the thinking categories of modern man and, hence, likely to continue being used in biology. (Ayala 1988, p. 95)

At this point Ayala simply surrenders to cognitive habits that do no good. Although the concept of progress for him has no cognitive content in science, he nonetheless sees human consciousness as the climax of a special kind of progress. The progressive feature is, as already stated, the "ability to obtain information about the environment and to react accordingly" (Ayala 1988, p. 91). This ability has reached its peak with 18

For example Darwin 1859, p. 489: "And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection."

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mankind. For the moment I would only like to point to the remarkable fact that a biologist who prefers not to talk of progress in biology, nonetheless comes up with his favorite criterion for it. This ambivalence hints - as Ayala himself has pointed out in the quotation given above - at a deeper problem in theory of knowledge and philosophy of science.

IV. The Epistemological Background of 'Progress' I would like to touch upon two points that make progress talk so seductive or even unavoidable, as Ayala sees it. The first has to do with preferential cognition, the second with the anthropomorphic idea of a cosmic meaning of life. Sensory Cognition can be understood19 as consisting in a comparison of present perceptions with conceptual schemes that one already possesses: one identifies a present perception as an instance of such'a conceptual scheme. In this sense all cognition is recognition (Schlick 1925, pp. 22ff., engl. ed. pp. 8ff.). Thus, cognition consists at its basis in comparing perceptions with conceptual schemes. In other contexts of cognition, too, comparing is the basic activity. Temporal sequence of events, topological situation of objects, and causal connection of things all consist in comparing things and events in certain respects. Notice that in Kant's theory of knowledge space, time, and causality are a priori structures of all experience. That means that there is no cognition of the world around us but a spatiotemporally ordered one. There is one form of cognition that has not been ennobled by Kant, but that nonetheless plays an important role in our cognitive as well as our practical life: comparison as to what is better or worse. We must make comparisons of that sort, as soon as we are in situations, where we have to choose or have to express preferences. Preference situ-

19

I am following a great majority of epistemologists, e.g. Schlick 1925.

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ations are ubiquitous already in everyday life, beginning at breakfast, and ending with what to read in bed before sleeping. This omnipresence of preference situations has established an epistemological habit of ranking phenomena in preference orders, even in cases in which no obligation for choosing exists. Such preference orders are highly subjective. What is good for me, need not be good for you. If we turn, now, to evolution and evolutionary comparisons, individual preferences do not come in anymore. With respect to whole process of evolution we do not regard ourselves as individuals but as members of our species. This species outlook puts us in a preferential position. The evolution of living nature, thus, becomes a purposive progress class, with man as the last element. O n e finds a strong tendency among those biologists, who care at all about progress, to choose criteria of evolutionary progress that put humans at the top, although one easily could choose otherwise: e.g., rats, as I did earlier. Another splendid candidate for evolutionary top positions is the family of A I D S viruses. Practically all criteria, mentioned earlier, are of the species sort, particularly and explicitly those of Ayala. Hence, progress and its criteria in evolutionary biology and beyond are rooted in a deep seated cognitive bias of humans for species preferential comparisons. M y second point has to do with a cognitive habit that seems to be as deeply rooted in mankind as preferential cognition. You know of vestigial organs, i.e., organs that in the evolutionary history of a species played a functional role that has been lost, e.g. vestiges of extremities in snakes, or vestiges of tail vertebra in humans. The concept of progress in evolutionary biology seems to be an intellectual vestige of conceptions already disposed of, in principle, for a while. O n e of the great achievements of Darwin and evolutionary biology was banishing finalism from science, i.e. the belief in

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an overall directed development to an predetermined end.20 This end was of course man. In the times of the scala naturae man could, and even had to, regard himself as the peak of creation, as its goal and end. Thus, human life in general, but also individual human life, achieved a cosmic meaning.21 That remained very much the case, even in Darwin and other evolutionists, although evolutionary theory accounts at most for directional change in particular stretches of the geological time scale. Man appears only at the end of the evolutionary scale, and his evolutionary duration is close to zero so far. Nature does not care particularly about us humans. Therefore, all attempts to construct particular and purposive progress classes towards man, be it strong or weak ones, are vestigial remains of the once ubiquitous conviction that man was creation's crowning glory. Contrary to these still ongoing attempts, evolutionary biology gives no meaning whatsoever to human life, neither does any other science. But that does not mean at all that our lives are meaningless, but only that an alleged 'cosmic meaning' does not render it meaningful.

Literature Ayala, Francisco J. (1988), "Can 'Progress' be Defined as a Biological Concept?" in: M. Nitecki (ed.) (1988), 75-96. Bîlsche, Wilhelm (1906), Vom Bazillus zum Affenmenschen: Naturwissenschaftliche Plaudereien, Jena: Diederichs, fourth edition. Bonnet, Carles (1781), La contemplation de la nature, in: Oeuvres, Vol. IV, Neuchâtel 1981. Bonnet Charles (1783), La Palingénésie philosophique, ou idées sur l'état passé et sur l'état futur des êtres vivans, in: Oeuvres, Vol. VII, Neuchâtel 1783. Butts, Robert E. (1984), Kant and the Double Government Methodology. Supersensibility and Method in Kant's Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: Reidei.

20 21

cf. M a y r l 9 9 1 A lively critique of the idea of cosmic meaning is given by Provine 1988.

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Crombie, Alistair C. (1994), Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition: the History of Argument and Explanation Especially in the Mathematical and Biomedical Sciences and Arts, Vol. II, London: D u c k w o r t h . Darwin, Charles (1859), On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, ed. Ernst Mayr, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Mayr, Ernst (1991), One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Cambride Mass.: Harvard University Press. Nitecki, Matthew H . (ed.) (1988), Evolutionary Progress, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Provine, William B. (1988), "Progress in Evolution and Meaning in Life," in: M. Nitecki (ed.) 1988, 49-74. Schlick, Moritz (1925), Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 2nd ed., Berlin: Julius Springer (reprint Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979 (English edition: General Theory of Knowledge, Vienna/New York: Springer, 1974).

Philippe Lazar

The Idea of Progress in Human Health

Life is a lukewarm state, highly isolated in the space-time immensity of the story of the universe, with a future heavily compromised by the next glaciation to come in less than one hundred thousand years, and sadly limited, just a few billion years later, by the unavoidable transformation of our tiny yellow sun into an hostile red giant. Health should have an even more restricted story. If we follow the World Health Organization (WHO), health will have a major milestone in no more than six years from now, since, as you probably all know, this rather optimistic institution proposed, a few decades ago, to reach "Health for All in the year 2000" an ultimate goal which destroys any perspective for future progress! Being then quite aware of the basic limitation of my topic, I would point out that the general title of this book relates not to progress in itself, but to the idea of progress, which I interpret as a wish to put a stress on the (various) possible representations of progress. This means that we should bring special attention to the various ways people perceive health issues according to their social status (i.e. specific categories of "healthy" population or patients, various health care practitioners, medical or health scientists, etc.), not forgetting that the expression "progress in human health" is understood by most people as describing a value (a significant improvement of health) - maybe as an intrinsic value, following Dag Prawitz's vocabulary? - much more than an evolution over time. The field of health indeed is probably one in which the naive feeling of a continuous improvement due to general progress

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of knowledge is still quite vivid in most people's minds, since they are ever more strongly pushed in this direction by the mass media, always ready to point out some magnificent new turn in biomedical research, which naturally leads immediately to a "revolution" in diagnosis or therapy. It is true, indeed, that life expectancy - a currently used global health indicator - is increasing (almost) everywhere (even in Africa, taken as a whole!). In developing countries, it is fair to say that such an increase is massively due to the improvement of basic hygiene, in industrialized countries, it is also due to recent major improvements in medical care and treatment, especially among adults and older people. Let me point out, to underline this fact, that in my country average life expectancy without impairment at age 65 increased from about ten to twelve years - a 2 0 % increase! - just between 1981 and 1991 - i.e., in no more than ten calendar years! I would like now to try to cover some of the issues evoked by these introductory remarks, and I have decided to express my views under four "theses", this word being chosen both to show my personal involvement in each of these theses and also to present them as being fundamentally open to discussion. These theses cover four basic questions. Health progress: from and for what? how? to whom? in which society? Each of them will be now developed through a series of non-exhaustive remarks and questions. Thesis 1: "from and for what?" It may be formulated as follows. "Public health policies and health actions on the one hand and health research (including biomedical research) on the other hand should be conceived in a dialectical way: they should be intensively interacting but keep a respectful distance from one another, without any operational hierarchy between them. " We are indeed in a period of explosion of basic biology. Everyone has heard about the immense progress during recent years in molecular and cellular biology, fundamental immunology, molecular genetics, etc. The concept of big science has

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even itself penetrated the biology fortress with the project of a total analysis of human genome. Incidentally, as far as the concept of "progress in knowledge" is also concerned here, particularly in its sociological dimensions, I think it would be of interest to study why this specific project has had such an emotional impact on some scientists, on the media and, hence, on the population. It might well be compared, to the psycho-sociological and political impact of the first autopsies, which were perceived by many people as a new qualitative rupture in the "authorized" exploration of nature and, more specifically, of human beings. All these fascinating progresses (and their genuine translation into a better understanding of many diseases and also in terms of a "transfer" into a real increase in our ability to prevent or to treat disease) have their counterpart, they may contribute to emphasize a too reductionist conception of health, mainly perceived in its first " W H O dimension", namely "the absence of disease". However perfect health is not only such an absence, but also the absence of "infirmity" 1 and, moreover, the representation of a complete state of well-being under three complementary aspects: physical, mental and social. This classical definition of health - that some people now find a little too passé and questionable - still has the merit of clearly showing that health is not only defined in a negative way by the presence of deficiencies but that it is also stakes positive and ambitious claims which interact with major individual and societal needs and/or projects. An operational translation of these considerations is that the fields of research which are concerned with health issues are considerably wider than those opened by modern biology and related sciences. In particular, all human and social sciences have a direct implication on health issues, including the definition of health itself, and of disease. There is a sociological defiThis questionable expression is used as a fast s u m m a r y for the self-explanatory trilogy "deficiency - impairment - handicap", also known as " W o o d s classification"

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nition of any disease, which is as important as its biomedical representation, not only in terms of understanding what happens, either in individual or collective aspects of this disease, but also in terms of possible actions towards its control. I do not wish indeed to develop the paradoxical thesis according to which medical and health improvements have nothing to do with medical and health research, and vice-versa, but I think that it is very important to try to clarify the respective roles of researchers and decision-makers and to respect the needs expressed by the latter in terms of relevant information and those expressed by the former in terms of basic freedom for research - which we know to be a legitimate condition for developing high quality research! However, it happens that both "wishes" are perfectly compatible if one takes into account that time scales for functioning are not at all the same for research and decision-making, nor are the genuine needs of each of the potential partners! Research is a long-term process, always specialized in very "narrow" tracks - even if, later, such narrow tracks may evolve into broad avenues! - whereas decision-making is a short-term issue, which should be ideally based on wellfounded, structured and properly assimilated information. The question of speed is in particular more and more significant in our democratic societies, which are exposed to high pressure for immediate realizations under the heavy impact of information power, an uninterrupted avalanche of opinion polls and an almost continuous series of partial or general elections! A solution to these difficulties might rely on what we have described, at my research institution - the French National Institute for Medical and Health Research, INSERM - as "collective expertise". Collective expertise is a process aimed at answering questions raised by decision-makers (belonging either to industry, or government, or services) and for which scientific information is available. It consists in asking a small number of experts to gather, to analyze critically and to synthesize in a report all published relevant information in the world about a given

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topic. Such an operation usually takes between three and six months and it may be applied to either scientific or technical assessment of new research or innovation tracks, or to the preparation of "strategic" decisions. As a brief conclusion of thesis number one, I would say that it tries to open a clear path to reconcile two complementary but also to some extent contradictory aspects of progress: progress in knowledge and progress for action. Thesis 2: " H o w ? " may be formulated as follows. "Expected improvements in care and cure resulting from progress of knowledge are not unequivocal processes; their introduction is bound to an explicit or implicit search for a fair balance between two complementary risks of error: errors of excess or errors of neglect. " Genuine progress in the way we can either prevent the incidence of diseases (care) or correct their effects (cure), or, more generally, deal with health problems are directly related to the degree of real innovation generated by the "new" available knowledge, this knowledge being used, according to the specific situation, either to introduce new modes of action or to modify present ones. This preliminary remark should be sufficient to bury finally the false and yet very hard to kill distinction between "fundamental" and "applied" research. Following Pasteur, I would rather say that such a distinction does not hold: research and applications of research are just like a tree and the fruits it bears. We all know indeed that, since research ignores boundaries, it would be quite stupid not to use the most relevant and acutely available results of relevant research, however they have been established, whether in looking for leads for new drugs or for improving diagnostic or therapeutic processes. However if high quality research appears to be the potential purveyor of improvements in health care and cure, this appealing medal nevertheless has another side. Indeed, the more innovative a substance or a process or a technique is, the higher is the level of the risk of introducing it. Together with an im-

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provement - which may be a major one - some unpredictable (or at least highly difficult to predict) adverse associated sideeffects may occur. Such a risk (which statisticians would call their "first kind" type of error) is intrinsically bound to the introduction of new actions, which means that it is strongly related to the idea of "progress" if we take this word in its dynamic meaning (i.e., "an attempt to improve a situation through a step forward"). Naturally, there is a way to avoid (or to decrease) such a risk, which is simply to refuse (or to delay) the use of available innovations, but then we have to face the other risk (the one statisticians would describe as of the "second kind"), which is the risk of not benefitting from what the innovations would have brought. These two risks are, in a devilish way complementary! When you decrease one of them, you automatically increase the other. Obviously these risks are not specific to the health field, but they have a major weight in this area, taking into account the obvious high sensitivity of people to health issues. Most of the major health controversies we have to face nowadays are more or less bound to this issue. It looks clear, for instance, that most people have a tendency to think about medical attitudes in controversial situations - for instance either in the case of induction of HIV contamination by nonheated blood for transfusions or in the situation of induced Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease by the use of growth hormone extracted from the pituitary in dwarfs - as if physicians who used these treatments at a particular time had then exactly the same amount of information as we now have available. Obviously, I do not wish here to give a solution to these grave and painful situations, I just want to underline that it is necessarily always the formal situation that we have to face when something really new happens, with an error by excess of activism (in the case of growth hormone) or by excess of conservatism (in the case of HIV contamination). In some specific situations - when a research process is explicitly launched - all our countries have adopted similar rules

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of behavior. Such is the case, for instance, for controlled randomised therapeutic trials. I just wish to recall, for those who might not be quite aware of the usual technique of controlled therapeutic trials, that they consist in comparing alternative treatments (sometimes including "placebos") on groups of patients, each of these groups being chosen from the whole series of available patients by a random selection. A large fraction of the ethical literature has been devoted to studying the moral legitimacy of such procedures, usually with a rather positive answer as long as individual human rights are carefully protected. More generally, when a patient enters any kind of medical research, it is generally recognized in Europe that his or her so-called "informed consent" should be asked for before his or her admission to the trial or study. I want to stress that such an attitude - which can be considered, as "progress" - does not solve all the problems. To some extent it mainly transfers them from the medical team to the patient himself - a transfer which undoubtedly can be considered as a progress in the respect of the patients as responsible human beings, but which does not eliminate the risks I mentioned earlier and which also puts a burden on the patients (the necessity of assuming a personal choice in a situation where they are at a disadvantage due to their disease) that some of them would probably prefer to leave to their practitioner! As far as care is concerned, we often say, in French : "mieux vaut prévenir que guérir" (it is better to prevent than to cure). Mentioning again the unavoidable problem of the balance between opposite risks, I would like to say a few words about two issues which the increasing appeal, nowadays, to prevention raises. The first concerns preventive medicine and the other the development of so-called predictive medicine, mainly based on genetic individual data. As far as preventive medicine is concerned, I wish to recall that prevention has a cost, not only from an economic point of view, but also from many other aspects. When prevention is a simple process (the usual vaccination programmes, fluorid-

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ation of drinking water for prevention of dental caries, iodination of salt in regions of endemic goiter etc.), it is obvious that the "cost" is negligible in comparison with the expected advantages. But is it the same, when for instance - and this is the case, in an on-going French survey - a cocktail of vitamins is to be taken every day for several years (and perhaps for a whole lifetime if the present survey appears to be successful)? The manifest "medicalization" of life which such a decision involves should be at least considered when such an attitude is recommended. So-called "predictive" medicine is concerned with the use of individual genetic - or other - "markers" to predict and if possible, to prevent future disease. I would like to stress the fact that, here again, things are less simple than some people might expect. I am awaiting with true impatience the golden age when it will become possible, from one drop of umbilical cord blood, to describe all future major health events in the life of any individual, including his or her life expectancy. Let us also think about the possible commercial use of such information (by insurance companies for instance), if clear international rules are not set up strictly to forbid such deviations. Let us also imagine how oppressive the social organization could become if people would accept suggestions such as the one recently made by an excellent human geneticist to use the knowledge of genetic profiles to avoid "some major risks for society"; and, as an example, she mentioned the eventual discovery of a gene responsible for sudden death syndrome and the concomitant "legitimate" prohibition which should be made to those bearing such a gene to become, for instance, airplane pilots (notwithstanding the fact that one could wonder how many planes have crashed since the beginning of civil aviation because both pilots together died from sudden death!). Thesis J: "To whom?" can be formulated as follows: "Inequalities in health should be treated according to the level of intrinsic value that societies attribute to health. "

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Progress in health can have quite different meanings either within our countries when we deal, for instance, with various social classes or ethnic groups, or between countries, and more especially when we compare developed and developing countries - i.e., the so-called " N o r t h " and "South". Let me just recall that the difference in life expectancy between social classes in France can be as great as ten years and that Europeans live on the average twice as long as the inhabitants of several countries of Central Africa. It is obvious that the idea of progress in health cannot be the same depending where you are located within such an extreme range! However, as far as industrialized countries are concerned, sensitivity is usually much more centered on major environmental issues than on tackling directly the question of massive world health inequalities. Most people believe that the future of the planet is nowadays truly threatened by the degradation of the "global" environment, and, further a lot of people do seriously think that such threats to the environmental integrity of the earth are mainly due to an overwhelming and uncontrolled third world development. For instance, they take the progressive destruction of the Amazonian forest both as a symbolic and highly worrying step towards the end of the planetary ecological balance. I do not wish to challenge the necessity of being aware of the major risks we are faced with, and of trying to avoid genuine irreversible situations and there is no doubt that it is a part of our worldwide responsibilities. However my own sensitivity is more oriented towards the lack of real concern for the perils connected with the demographic explosion of the world population and its health consequences. While it is true that a clean and pleasant environment does facilitate the realization of "a perfect state of physical, mental and social well-being", we should not forget that in the long run health is firstly bound to the level of development and that, in consequence, even if uncontrolled development partly degrades the "natural" environment, such a degradation does not compromise its primary positive effects on health. And let

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us try not to forget that the main environmental degradations of the earth are still due much more to the North's overconsumption of energy than to the South's growing activities! Thesis 4: "In which society?" may be formulated as follows: "Health progress constitutes a major political issue, which might offer a fruitful field of thinking and experimentation for the improvement of democracy. " I wish to dare to use the formal protection of "theses" to raise two last questionable issues . 1. Biomedical and health research has given birth, here and there, to various kinds of ethical committees. In France for instance, I was personally deeply involved, in 1982, in the creation of the French national consultative committee for ethics in the life and health sciences. Such a committee needed to study the moral problems involved in the incorporation of new biological knowledge relevant to use in medical and health practices and to help society to face them by disentangling their components. In my mind, such a committee had to play a preparatory role for basic debates within society, helping citizens and their representatives (including parliament) to start thorough and well-documented discussions about the main issues resulting from scientific progress and its consequences. What has struck me is that our committee has progressively evolved in the direction of a kind of brotherhood of "wise people", discussing for long periods among themselves (they are about 40) and then producing, as a final output, an official advice to society and the political powers, which, generally speaking, is a fair compromise but which puts forward the idea of a consensus ahead of the idea of a legitimate diversity of opinions and of the structural role of debates for finding the best acceptable solution to such problems in a given society. Would not it be possibly a better progress to move to a better conception of the respective roles in a society of its experts, on the one hand, and of laymen and their elected representatives, on the other hand, instead of imprisoning the main social

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issues within highly specialized groups of distinguished people? 2. Progress, as we have seen from various examples in health or other issues, is bound to audacious steps forward in a state of partial ignorance. We have seen that such "advances" may carry within themselves specific risks, which may later turn into adverse effects, sometimes serious. However, refusing to take any step forward bears other risks, bound to an inadequate level of intervention. I wonder whether the situation we meet here is not a kind of a direct expression of the permanent conflict - which feeds what we call "democracy" - between the forces which pull the system forward, sometimes too strongly or without a careful enough evaluation of the risks they take and the forces which have as a first objective to keep what is already working in good condition, sometimes underestimating the risks of global regression if no real progress is integrated into the system. 3. The mixing of these two last assertions would simply lead to a recommendation that any deliberate attempt to integrate potential progress into the ordinary functioning of society should be coupled with well-prepared debates between true democrats, independent of whether they are personally closer to progressivism or to conservatism: genuine progress and the social perception of its importance do rely on such in diversity-rooted political processes.

Notes on Contributors John D. Barrow is Professor of Astronomy at the Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, U K and at present holds a PPARC Senior Research Fellowship. His research interests are in the areas of cosmology, particle astrophysics, galaxy formation and gravitation physics. He is the author of more than 200 research papers in these subject areas and also of a number of books which explain modern scientific developments in a wider historical and philosophical context. These include, The Left Hand of Creation (1983 and 1994), L'Homme et le Cosmos (1984), The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986), The World within the World (1988), Theories of Everything (1991), Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking and Being (1992), Perche il mondo e matematico (1992), The Origin of the Universe (1994), and The Artful Universe (1995). Jean Blondel was born in Toulon (France) in 1929. H e graduated from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris in 1953 and from St. Antony's College (Oxford) where he stayed from 1953 to 1955. H e was a lecturer at Keele University from 1958 to 1963, an ACLS fellow at Yale in 1963-4, and became Professor of Government at the University of Essex in 1964. H e started the European Consortium for Political Research in 1969 and directed it for ten years. Leaving Essex in 1984, he was appointed scholar of the Russell Sage Foundation in N e w York in 1984 before becoming professor of political science at the European University Institute in Florence in 1985. H e is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of the

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Academia Europaea. His publications include: Voters, Parties, and Leaders (first edition, 1963), Comparative Legislatures (1973), Political Parties (1978), World Leaders (1980), The Discipline of Politics (1981), The Organization of Governments (1982), Government Ministers in the Contemporary World (1985), Political Leadership (1987), Comparative Government (new, and entirely revised edition, 1990), The Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe, (with J. L. Thiebault) (1991), Governing Together (with F. Muller-Rommel) (1993). Walter Burkert was born in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, (Germany) in 1931. H e studied classics, history and philosophy at the universities of Erlangen and Munich. Dr. phil. 1955, Habilitation 1961 at the University of Erlangen. H e was Professor of Classics at the Technical University of Berlin 1966-1969 and at the University of Zürich since 1969. H e has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and at University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Toronto and Fribourg (Switzerland); he received the Balzan Prize for 1990. His publications include Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (1972), Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (1979), Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (1983), Greek Religion Archaic and Classical (1985), Greek Mystery Cults (1987), The Orientalizing Revolution (1992). Alistair Crombie was born in Brisbane (Australia) in 1915. An Honorary Fellow and a former Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, he has been responsible for the introduction of the history of science and medicine into normal teaching and research in the University. He has held distinguished academic appointments, among others, at Princeton University, University College London, the University of Tokyo, Smith College and Williams College, Massachusetts, the Sorbonne (University of Paris I) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and has lec-

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tured widely throughout the world. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Member of the Academia Leopoldina, and he has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham and Paris, the Galileo Prize, and the Alexander von Humboldt Award. A graduate of the Universities of Melbourne and of Cambridge, he began his career as a research zoologist and at the same time studied philosophy. He was the first editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and of History of Science, and is a former President of both the British Society for the History of Science and the International Academy for the History of Science. His publications include Augustine to Galileo (1952), Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (1958), Scientific Change (1963), The Rational Arts of Living (1987), Science, Optics and Music in medieval and Early Modern Thought (1990), Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition, 3vols. (1994), and Science, Art and Nature in medieval and Modern Thought (1995). Alistair Crombie died in February 1996. Rudolf Flotzinger was born in 1939 in Upper Austria; from 1950 to 1958 during his school years he was a musician and choir singer at the monastery of Kremsmünster. From 1958 to 1966 he studied musicology in Vienna and Göttingen, and since 1971 he has been full Professor for Musicology at the University of Graz. He edited (with Gemot Gruber) Musikgeschichte Österreichs (2nd ed. Vienna 1995) and since 1992 has been the editor of Acta musicologica (Kassel-Basel). He has published in international musicological periodicals especially on Western music and in various Festschriften on so called early polyphony (on the evolutionary interpretation of polyphony in progress). He is a member of a number of scientific societies and has lectured at numerous Universities in Eastern and Western Europe as well as in Africa.

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Antonio García-Bellido is Research Professor and Head of the Developmental Genetics Laboratory at the Centro de Biologia Molecular at the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid. He is a member of the Real Academia de Ciencias and many foreign academies including the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences (USA). He has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, California Institute of Technology, Zürich and Chicago and has numerous publications in molecular genetics. Of interest here are: "Cell Lineages and Genes," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London Β 312: 101-128 (1985) and "How Organisms Are Put Together," Eur. Review 2: 15-21 (1994). Philippe Lazar, a former student of Polytechnic School (1956), was trained as a biostatistician and an epidemiologist. Director of research in INSERM (the French national institute for medical and health research) from 1964, he was invited as a visiting professor by the Department of Epidemiology of the Harvard School of Public Health in 1975. He was nominated as the director of an environmental health research unit in INSERM (1977) and successively elected as chairman of the INSERM specialized committee on health research (1975), the INSERM scientific council (1981) and the EEC medical and health research committee (1987). He has been Director General of INSERM, since 1982. He has published more than sixty scientific papers, the majority of them in epidemiology of human reproduction, has written or contributed to several books on medical and biological statistics and published Les explorateurs de la santé (1989), a book conceived as "a journey towards the center of medical research." He has received several French honors, including the rank of "Chevalier de le Légion d'honneur." Shigeru Nakayama was born in Japan in 1928. He received an M.A. in astrophysics (Tokyo) in 1951 and a Ph.D. in history of science (Harvard) in 1959. He taught history of science at the University of Tokyo until 1989. His English works include, A History of Japanese Astronomy (1969), Chinese Science (1973),

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Science and Society in Modern Japan (1974), Academic and Scientific Traditions in China, Japan and the West (1984), Science, Technology and Society in Postwar Japan (1991) and "Japanese Scientific Thought," Dictionary of Scientific Biography XV. Dag Prawitz is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm University, Sweden. His main research is in logic, in particular proof theory, in which field he has published the monograph Natural Deduction. A Proof-Theoretical Study (1965) and several papers, e.g. "Ideas and Results in Proof Theory" (Proc. 2nd Scand. Logic Symp., 1971). He made some of the first attempts at automatic deduction with the papers "A Mechanical Proof Procedure and its Realization in an Electronic Computer" (J. of the Assoc. for Computing Machinery, 1960) and "An Improved Proof Procedure" (Theoria, 1960). More recently he has worked on the application of proof theoretical ideas in the philosophy of language. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Institut International de Philosophie, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Nicholas Rescher was born in Hägen (Germany) in 1928. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Queens College (Flushing N.Y.) and Princeton University. From 1957 to 1961 he was Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh University, and is now University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a member of the Institut International de Philosophie and several other learned academies. In 1984 he was awarded the Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship. H e has been a visiting scholar at Oxford, Constance, and Salamanca and received honorary degrees from Lehigh University, Loyola University of Chicago, the National Automous University of Cordoba (Argentina) and the University of Constance. His more than sixty books ranging over many areas of philosophy include Studies in the History of Arabic Logic (1963), The Philosophy of Leibniz

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(1967), Induction. An Essay on the Justification of Inductive Reasoning (1980), The Limits of Science (1984), and A System of Pragmatic Idealism I-III (1992-1994). Gereon Wolters was born in 1944. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Constance, Germany, where his research and teaching focus on the history and philosophy of science. He has published Basis und Deduktion: Studien zur Entstehung und Bedeutung der Theorie der axiomatischen Methode beij. H. Lambert (1728-1777) (1980), Mach I, Mach II, Einstein und die Relativitätstheorie: Eine Fälschung und ihre Folgen (1987), and (co)edited: Franz Anton Mesmer: Wissenschaft, Scharlatanerie und Poesie (1988), Denkmaschinen? Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven zum Thema Gehirn und Geist (1993), Logic, Language and the Structure of Scientific Theories (1994), Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences (1995). Georg Henrik von Wright was born in Helsinki in 1916. He studied with Eino Kaila in Helsinki and Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge. He has been Professor of Philosophy in the universities of Helsinki and Cambridge and Professor-atLarge at Cornell University. He is a Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland. His principal publications include, A Treatise on Induction and Probability (1951), An Essay in Modal Logic (1951), The Varieties of Goodness (1963), Norm and Action (1963), Explanation and Understanding (1971), Wittgenstein (1982), Philosophical Papers (1983-84), The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays (1993).

Index action and progress 223 Adler, G. 125 Adorno, T. 122 Aeschylus 23, 51 Alaric 43, 56 analysis and synthesis 52 Anaxagoras 29, 37 Anaximander 29 anti-progressivism 30 Antipater of Thessalonica 40 Apollonius 39 application of scientific knowledge 6 Apter, D.E. 94 Archelaos 29 Archimedes 39, 52 Aristarchus, 39 Aristotle, 20, 30-36, 38, 39, 51, 52, 54, 59, 148, 155, 176 artistic progress 72, 121, 122, 124 Augustine of Hippo 3, 43, 44, 54-57, 155, 156 Augustus 39, 43 automation in logic 150 avant-gardism 130 axiological component: see value judgments axiomatization 149 Ayala, F. 212-215 Bacon, Francis 3, 6, 59 Bacon, Roger 58, 59 Baudelaire, C. 130 Bayle Pierre 60 Beethoven, L. van 129, 132 Bekker, P. 132

Berlioz, H . 129 Bernard of Chartres 57 Big Bang 156, 157, 1 6 2 , 1 7 1 , 172, 179 Bîlsche, W. 203 Bodin, Jean 59 Bonnet, C. 205-210 Boole, G. 148 Boscovitch, R. 158 Boulez, P. 130 Brahms, J. 130, 136 branching view of progress 63, 72, 196 Bruckner, A. 135 Burckhardt, J . 19 Burney, C. 124 Bury, J . B . 19, 61 Busoni, Feruccio 130 Carson, R. 114 causes of progress 59 cell differentiation 191-192, 195 Chopin, F. 129 Christian view of progress 45 Cicero 19 Clement of Alexandria 44 Clifford, W. 159 collective knowledge 142 Columbus, C. 17 complexity 177, 179, 212 Comte, A. 7, 19 Condorcet, M.-J. de 4, 7, 17, 61, 73-75, 128 consensus vs. diversity 228 consistency, progress in 147 Constantine 43, 44, 55

238 consumerism 12 cultural evolution 30, 32 cultures as organisms 16 cycles in artistic style 15 cyclic conceptions 2, 14, 20, 34-36, 53, 56, 65-75, 145, 175 Cynics 53 Dahlhaus, C. 126 Danilevsky, N.J. 15, 16 Dante Alighieri 55 Darwin, C. 61, 74, 133, 203, 213, 215, 216 Darwinism 11, 15, 61, 75, 127, 210 De Witte, Β. 166 de Gaulle, C. 117 de la Borde, Β. 124 definition of progress 1,61, 103, 139-140, 201-205 Democritus 32, 53 Descartes, R. 3, 59, 60 descriptive notion of progress 48 determinism, breakdown of 159 development and progress 78, 81, 89, 121-126,129 Diodorus Siculus 29, 47, 50, 53 Diogenes the Dog 30 Dionysius Exiguus 44 disillusionment with progress 11 divine providence 43 Dodds, E.R. 20, 51, 53 Dryden, John 60 Durkheim, E. 86 Edelstein, L. 19 Eggebrecht, H.H. 126 Einstein, Α. 159, 160, 161, 162, 165 Eliade, M. 34 emergent properties 177 Empedocles 36 Encyclopedists 108 Enlightenment 5, 74, 75, 128 Epicureans 53 Erasmus of Rotterdam 60 Eratosthenes 39 Euclid 39, 149, 159 Eudoxus 33 Euler, L. 158 Euripides 15

Index Eusebius 55 evolutionary progress 196, 210 evolutionary trends 211 experiment 49 Fétis, F.-J. 124 Fillipo Villani 58 final state of progress 33 Fontenelle, B.L.B, de 3, 6 Forkel, J.N. 124, 127, 128, 129, 132 Frege, G. 148, 149, 151, 152 Froissart, Jean 113 futurism 130 Galen 52 Galilei, Galileo 59, 63 Gilbert, William 59 Giotto di Bondone 59 goal-directed progress 31, 61 Godei, Κ. 149, 150, 152 Goethe, J.W. von 128, 133 Golden Age 3, 24, 38, 41, 53 Gosse, E. 112 Great Chain of Being 205-210 Greek science, nature of 50 Grimm, J. 128, 136 Grimm, W. 128, 136 Haeckel E. 203 Handschin, J. 125 HartleJ. 171 Hawking, S. 171 Hawkins, J. 124 Hayden, J. 132, 135 health, definition of 221 hedonic progress 6, 9, 56 Hegel, G.W.F. 11, 12, 111, 130 Heraclitus 35 Herder, J. G. 61 Herodotus 51 Heron 41 Herophilos 39 Hesiod 22, 23, 24, 30, 44 Hilbert, D. 150 Hipparchos 39 Hippocrates 27, 51 history of science in relation to art history 14, 15, 125 Hobbes, Thomas 77, 79, 93

Index Homer 44 Honegger, Α. 130 Hoyle, F. 157 Hugh of St. Victor 51 Huntington, S.P. 85, 87 illusion, progress as 10 infinite progress 37, 42, 61, 131, 150 informed consent 225 innovation 130 instrumental knowledge 6 intellectual progress 137 intellectual revolution in Greece 25 intrinsic value 139, 219 invention of writing 29 Jackson, A. 77 Justinian 40 Kant, I. 11, 152,214 Kepler, J. 57, 67 kinds of progress 7, 139-140, 201-203, 219; value transfer between 7, 8 Knepler, G. 137 knowledge, definition of 142 Kuhn, Th. 70, 143, 144 Laplace, P.S. 107 laws of motions 160 laws of nature 55, 57 Leibniz, G.W. 11, 149, 152, 209 Leonardo da Vinci 108 Lévi-Strauss, C. 20 life expectancy 220 linear conceptions of history 2, 14, 20, 56 Lissa, Ζ. 126 Liszt, F. 129, 135 Locke, John 77 Lucretius 29, 53, 54 Machiavelli, Nicolo 59, 109 Mahler, G. 132 Marco Polo 17 Marcus Aurelius 37 Martini, G.B. 124 meaning of history 49, 54, 56,

239 meaning of life 214, 216 measures of development 82; efficiency of political institutions 83-88, 95, 96, 99; differentiation and autonomy of institutions 86-88; political participation 92; expansion of choices 94, 96, 97; role of negotiation 97, 98 method 59 Michelangelo Buonarroti 15 Mill, J.S. 112 military technology, role of 73, 74 modernization 17 monophony 131 moral decline 52 moral progress 7, 9 morphogenetic versatility 198 Mozart, W.A. 132, 135 Muller, W.Chr. 132 myth of progress 2, 12, 17, 141 myths and progress 20-25, 48 narcissistic individualism 10 Newman J. H. 61 Newton, I. 157-160, 162, 165, 209 Newtonian mechanics 158 Nicolai, C.F. 128 Nietzsche, F. 19, 34 'no boundary' proposal 171-174 nodulation 177, 199 non-Euclidean geometry 159 normal science 71 number mysticism 66 optimism 110; and pessimism 112-114 organisation of a political system 81 organizational levels 177, 199 origin of idea of progress 19, 28, 29, 34 origin of mathematics 51 origin of the arts 51 origin of the universe 162 origins of western science 57 Orosius 43, 44 Owl of Minerva 12 Pasteur, L. 223

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Patrizi, Francesco 59 Paul the Apostle 44, 45 perfection, moral 6, 7 periodisation 125 Perrault, Claude 209 Pestalozzi, J . H . 128 Petrarch, Francesco 58, 113 Petrus Ramus 60 Phidias 15 Philip VI of France Philo Judaeus of Alexandria 54, 155

Ralegh, Walter 60 rational knowledge 51 rationality and progress 126 Rawls, J. 147 recovery of Greek learning 58, 60 recreations 65 reflective equilibrium 147 research and application 223 research, origin of 27 resurrection 209 reversible phenomena 180, 184

philosophy of history 15 placebos 225 Plato 27, 29, 30, 33-36, 51-56, 110, 176, 201 Pliny the Elder 42, 53 Poggi Bracciolini 108 Poisson, S.-D. 160 political development and economic power 90 political progress 77-100 polyphony 131 Popper, K. 143, 144 Posidonius 53 post-progress outlook 62 Prawitz, D. 219 precision, mechanical 71, 72 precision, observational 67-70 predictability and progress 55,

Riemann, Β. 159 risk 223-224 Rohde, E.19 Rome, sacking of 43, 56

103-105, 115-119, 177 predictive medicine 226 preferential cognition 214-215 prescriptive notion of progress 48 Presocratics, 20 preventive medicine 225-226 Proclus 51 progress as guiding vision 60 progress classes 202 progress in literature 128 Progress-party 129 progression of tones 134-136 Protagoras 29, 37 Ptolemy 39, 52 Pye, L. W. 79, 81, 89 Pythagoras 35 quarrel of ancients and moderns 60

Sachs, C. 137 Schiller, F. 22 Schlesinger, A. 117 Schlick, M. 214 Schönberg, Α. 123, 129, 130 Schrödinger equation 163 Schubert, F. 132 science as accumulative 4, 63, 143 science as transcultural 4 Scriabin, A . N . 131 Second law of thermodynamics 175 secularized salvation story 5 Seneca 41, 42, 53, 58 Shakespeare, W. 15 singularities 158, 163-165 Smith, A. 11 social planning 13 social progress 77 socio-economic development 90, 91 Socrates 35 Sophocles 27, 28, 51 Sorai Ogiu 70 Spencer, H . 7 Spengler, O . 16 Spinoza, Β. 108, 117 Stoics 54 styles of rationality 49, 62, 63 styles, in art 15 syntagms 193, 197

Index technological vs. philosophical progress 152 technology, role of 3; relation to science 4, 5, 7; as a corrective of technology 12 Tertullian 55 Thucydides, 26, 51 time scales 222 time, erosion of absolute 160 time, nature of 155 Toynbee, A. 16 tractability and progress 105-109 transfer of information 184-186 truth and progress in philosophy 146 truth and progress in science 144 universities, role of 57 value judgment and progress 80, 84, 88,91, 139, 204,213

241 Vasari, Giorgio 59 Vauban, Sebastian 209 Vico, G. 15 Virgil 103 Vitruvius 53 Voltaire 61 Von Wright, G . H . 141, 145 Wagner, R. 129, 135 water wheel 40, 41 Weber, M. 126 Webern, A. 133 welcomability of progress 109-114 Wheeler, J. A. 166 Wheeler-De Witt equation 163, 168-169, 172 Wieland, C.M.128, 136 Wiora, W. 125, 126, 127 world-civilization 17 Xenophanes 28, 29, 51